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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 


















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9 

Bryan Maurice 

OR 

THE SEEKER 


BY THE 

/ 

REV. WALTER MITCHELL 

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NEW YORK 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 
2 AND 3 Bible House 
i8S8 




COPYKIQHT, 1867, BY WaLTEK MiTCHELL. 
COPYBIGHT, 1888, BY THOMAS WHirTAKER. 



PREFACE. 

Bryan Maurice was written manj years ago, and there are 
in it several things which would appear in considerably modi- 
fied shaj^e if the book was to be reconstructed. 

But it seems best to let them stand as pictures of a state of 
the Church, which at that time were drawn to the best of the 
writer's knowledge and ability. The doctrinal points and the 
general tone are such as the author is willing to abide by. It 
has been regarded as in some sort an autobiography. That it 
is not: in any one of its incidents or sketches of character. The 
only particular in which it can be so considered is in the men- 
tal processes of the change from Unitarianism to the faith of 
the Church, and even here, as the writer’s experiences were in 
no way parallel with that of his hero, the likeness is not very 
close. The hero and heroine are entirely ideal. 

When the book was written there was a movement on foot 
toward the construction of a “Church of the Future,” one 
which should unite the doctrines of a liberal Christianity with 
the practices of Catholic antiquity. It was partly to deal with 
this that the story was conceived and executed ; and so tar as 
any such ideas are now existent, Bryan Maurice may be useful 
to show what sort of issue they would find. 

It has been objected to all writing of this sort that religious 
discussion in a novel proves nothing, because the author can 
shape it so as to I3roduc0 the conclusion desired. 

While this is only partly true, since fiction constrains the 
author much more nearly than is believed by the general 
reader, it does not touch at all the soundness of an argument 
by itself considered. This stands or falls on its own merit. 

One of the ablest and clearest pieces of reasoning one 
can find, the late Canon Kingsley’s “Phaethon,” is in the form 
of dialogue, and of course open to the above criticism. 



Bryan Maurice 

OR 


THE SEEKEE. - 




CHAPTER I. 

T he Albergo Della Poste of Faenza is not an inviting 
hostelry. So thought a young American, as on a Decem- 
ber evening he sat shivering in one of its dreary chambers. 
The floor was of brick, with only a little rag of carpet 
before the fireplace. The fuel provided was either of light 
grape-vine twigs which flashed up furiously and then fell 
into white ashes, or else of monstrous green logs which 
would not kindle. There was an inch of space between the 
door and its groundsill, through which the air streamed in 
dolefully. Dinner was just over; there stood a bottle of 
thin, sour wine upon the table, a paper of rank, weedy- 
looking cigars, and a few books lay beside. A huge, 
battered travelling-trunk was standing near the bed, upon 
whose canvas-covering were marked the letters B. M. It 
was about six o’clock, and the dusk had fairly set in. Upon 
these slender resources and his own thoughts the traveller 
was depending to “make a night of it,” at least till toward 
midnight. It was not a very cheerful prospect. The young 
man lit a cigar, threw a handful of twigs upon the coals, 
and coaxed the dryest-looking log forward into the blaze. 
“ Very like these Italians,” said he to himself, “are their 
fires. All flash and white heat at first with the revolution- 
ary elements; but the solid, conservative institutions, the 
nobility and the peasantry and the clergy won’t catch, and 
a few ashes are all that is left.” 

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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


This was said neither cynically or despondingly, but with 
a semi-complacent air, as though the speaker thought he 
had made a good hit. Italy and the Italians were nothing 
to him except to be looked at. He looked round at his 
table and took up his journal, made an entry or two in the 
book, — a simyde pocket diary, — laid it down, seized a 
French guide-book, and glanced over a couple of pages, 
making pencilled notes upon its margin, then turned rapidly 
over the leaves of a catalogue of the Academia dei Belli 
Arti at Bol^^gna, underscoring here and there the title of a 
})icture, and then pushed both away from him with the air 
of a man who finishes his work. Up to this time he had 
moved rapidly and decidedly, like one who knows his 
object, but this over, he sat with Kingsley’s “Yeast” in his 
hand, half open, dreamily looking into the fire. He tried 
to read a few lines, then flung down the book with an im- 
patient air, and took up, as a dernier resort, a small pocket- 
Bible. 

“ I should like to read that book!” he ejaculated. “Not, 
of course, for anything in particular, but as a Hebrew his- 
tory. It has certainly curious things in it. If Jepthah 
now was called Agamemnon and his daughter Iphigenia, I 
suppose we should think it poetry and passion and all that; 
but being it is the Book of Judges, we read it very solemnly 
to little children Sunday afternoons to keep them still. By 
Jove! I do think it is the same story, — the legend localized, 
of course, by Greek and Hebrew. Which had it first? 
The Greek came from Egypt, so did the Hebrew. Where- 
fore the Nile is the Father not only of Egypt but of 
legends. Where, I wonder, is the original home of the 
myth? Isn’t it, after all, allegory, — nature and all that sort 
of thing, — Zeus and Here the creative and receptive forces, 
and the wisdom of the mummies generally ? Only I wish 
I could shake off the spell of cliildhood and read this book 
instead of staring at it, or thinking of the dollar I am to 
have when I read it through. I thought I had put the 

Atlantic well between me and my childhood — and yet .” 

He fell to reading again, and perhaps by dint of severer 
effort, perhaps by the help of the train of classical analo- 
gies he had invoked and hoped to discover, he succeeded in 
becoming so absorbed in his reading as not to notice the 
Bound of a carriage rumbling through the archway ui.der 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


7 


his room, nor, half an hour after, the noise of footsteps in 
the passage-way. There came a rap at the door, and at Ins 
reply the Cameriere entered, bringing a basket of wood, and 
uttering a profusion of voluble Italian, of Avhich “Ameri- 
cano” was the only word our hero understood. He tried to 
frame an answer, half drew out his passport, caught up his 
phrase-book, stammered, and finally broke down altogether, 
taking refuge in the only familiar phrase. Non capisco 
nihite” 

“Then it is time I took care of myself,” said a cheerful 
voice, and a tall gentlemanly-looking man advanced into 
the room. “I’m quite alone, en route to Bologna, and find- 
ing that I’ve a countryman in the same scrape as myself, I 
have come to propose that we join forces.” 

“Delighted to see you, I’m sure — have you dined? Kell- 
ner — Gargon — Cam — what’s your name?” was the young 
man’s reply; but that functionary had gone. 

“I took the liberty of giving him his directions before- 
hand, and if you will permit me to contribute a little from 
my own stock of creature comforts we shall do better than 
by drawing on the resources of the Della Poste.” 

“My name is Gardiner. You shall tell me yours by and 
by, if you think best.” 

The stranger threw himself into a chair, and stretched 
out his feet to the now blazing fire, drew from his pocket a 
cigar-case, offered its contents to his host, lighted another 
for himself, and a pleased look of comfort came over his 
handsome features. He was a tall man, large framed, and 
slightly stooping, the head beginning to be bald a little. 
The whiskers trimmed in the English fashion. He wore 
spectacles, his hands were white and very handsome, his 
mouth showed great firmness, and his forehead was high and 
ample. He glanced at the table, and, catching sight of the 
opened Bible laid face downward, a graver look came over 
his face. 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said ; “ I hope I have not tres- 
passed. You were not preparing for bed, were you ?” 

“ Oh no, not at all. Why did you — oh, I see,” replied 
the younger man. “ No, I was not reading — that is, I was. 
I was reading simply for occupation. You interrupted 
nothing. I shall not go to bed these three hours or more. 
I am very glad you have come in, indeed.” 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


There came another knock at the door, and the Carae- 
riere reappeared ^vith a small travelling-case, from which 
the new-comer speedily produced a flask — straw-covered and 
inviting-looking. 

“ I have taken the liberty,” he said, “ of bringing you 
some of the vino di Capri to try. It is direct from Naples. 
You have not been there yet?” 

“No, I am on my way to Rome. I left Bologna this 
morning.” 

“ Ah — where did you stop ? At the Svizzer, I suppose ? 
Were there any Americans there — a tall, elderly lady and 
two young ones ?” 

“ No, sir ; only English, and the oflicers of an Austrian 
regiment. Stop — I believe a party came in last night, and 
one of the ladies was tall. I passed them on the stairs, and 
heard her say, ‘ My son promised to meet me here but 
more I can’t tell you.” 

“ That is enough,” said the elder. “ I was delayed at 
Ancona, by this passport nuisance, a whole day, and went 
out to see the Santa Casa at Loretto. What an absurdity 
it is to suppose that a house should fly through the air from 
Palestine to Italy, and yet Romanism insists upon this as 
one of her miracles.” 

“ Do you really suppose, sir, educated Catholics believe 
any such things ? I supposed that w^e had got nearly to 
the end of holding the miracles as a ground of belief, and 
after all, one miracle is about as hard to believe as another.” 

“ But you were reading the Bible when I came in. What 
do you hold that to be ?” 

“ I hardly know, sir. I was brought up to believe I ought 
to read it ; I never was told why, and so I never did read it. 
I used to hear a chapter at morning and night read at school 
and college, and a little now and then on Sundays. I 
believed till I was ten or twelve that the Old Testament was 
sent down to Moses on Mount Sinai, and the New I supposed 
came in some equally marvellous way. Then I was told 
that Paley was unanswerable to prove the miracles, but 
Paley’s arguments did not seem to me to answer Strauss or 
Theodore Parker. So I went to my teachers, who assured 
me that the Sermon on the Mount proved its own divinity; 
and again, Mr. Emerson made me think something very 
like that was to be found in the Hindoo and Persian. I 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


9 


was told that there must be five original races, and that 
being so, I can’t see that Genesis is to be taken very lite- 
rally. I rather incline, just now, to the notion that it is the 
allegorical principle of good and evil, as the Hebrew mind 
shaped it, which is told in the story of Adam and Eve. The 
feminine part of the soul’s nature, the appetite, the will, the 
desire, covets knowledge ; the reason, the calculating, manly 
element, yields, and with knowledge comes of course sorrow, 
— since only through knowledge and sorrow can be progress. 
However, I am all afloat, I confess. I was looking just now 
at the coincidences between the Hebrew and Greek legends, 
and trying to put them exactly on the same level. I left as 
many prejudices as I could at the Custom-house of Rotter- 
dam, but I find old associations too strong ; and yet I can- 
not see why Samson and Hercules should not be equally 
legendary, or why the battles under Troy’s walls are not 
quite as real as those before Jericho.” 

“ Where were you educated, sir?” broke in the elder. 

Old Harvard,” was the reply. 

“ So I supposed,” said Gardiner. “ Old Harvard, being 
younger probably than the youngest building in these streets, 
has the right to walk roughshod over the truths of the past. 
I myself had a little of the Harvard training, and know 
something of its teachings. I don’t much wonder at your 
present difficulties. Have you any objection to believing?” 

“ I was brought up to hate and despise New England 
Calvinism, and to suppose that my common sense was my 
own, and not to be the slave of impossible propositions. I 
have an objection to believing in predestination, for that 
seems to me to settle all need of belief.” 

“ Well, w^e will let Calvin and Arminius go for the pre- 
sent — let us dispose of Genesis. Are you entirely committed 
to the five-race theory ?” 

“Not at all ; I have no other objections than Behring’s 
Straits, and they never seemed to me insuperable.” 

“ Are you willing, then, to concede that Genesis may be 
true?” 

“Certainly — only I can make very little sense of it; a 
wild legendary book, fragmentary, minute in detail, and 
vast in outline, breaking into startling episodes, such as the 
Deluge, the fall of Sodom, the dispersion of Babel, and the 
sacrifice of Isaac. I never could-- pardon me, if I shock 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


you — I never could receive that for anything but a myth. 
The divine command could not require anything so awful 
to test a man’s faith. No, I do not feel willing that Genesis 
be taken except as an allegory.” 

“ I hardly know where to begin with you. I suppose you 
will accept a Creative Spirit ?” 

“Certainly — Bonaparte’s reply to the savans always 
seemed to me conclusive — ‘Very well, Messieurs — but who 
made all that ” 

“And you don’t object to man as a part of His 
scheme ?” 

“ No, of course not.” 

“ And He made man sinful ?” 

“Why no, I suppose not — that is hardly consistent -with 
my idea of the Creator.” 

“ Then man is innocent now ?” 

“ There is the difficulty, sir. I have rather taken up the 
theory that there is no such thing as sin, that it is only the 
conflicting elements of man’s nature working out of har- 
mony in his efforts after the highest good : that is, what is 
sin in one man is only the abandoned virtue of a lower 
stage. Duelling, for instance, becomes murder as we grow 
civilized.” 

“ And are there no sins which are always sin independent 
of society ?” 

The young man got up from his chair and paced the 
room hastily once or twice, looked at his companion, then 
his eyes fell. 

“ Well, I give up that point,” said he ; “yes, I know that 
sin is a reality, and theories are just so much bravado and 
whistling in the dark. I suppose — I’m — like what most 
young men are ; and if I had any doubt about myself, I’ve 
seen one or two cold-blooded things which about settle the 
question. Yes, sin has got into man — somehow — but that 
story of the apple and the serpent is hardly anything but a 
fable.” 

“ Let us leave the serpent — though I should like to have 
you explain the universal hatred of mankind for the ser- 
pent race — let us leave him for the present and keep to 
what you call the apple — a word you won’t find in the 
Mosaic account, by the way. What were the three things 
which tempted Eve? It was good for food, pleasant to the 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


11 


eyes, and to be desired to make one wise. Now here are 
the three representative qualities which the Church in her 
baptismal covenant describes as the world, the flesh, and 
the devil : that is, the bodily appetite, innocent in itself, 
except for the prohibition ; the pleasure of the eyes, that is, 
the intellectual faculty, the perceptive powers ; and the 
moral element, the soul’s craving for power. Now turn to 
the New Testament to St. Luke’s gospel-account of the 
temptation. What is there addressed to our Blessed Lord? 
The temptation of the bodily appetite, to make the stones 
bread; of the intellect, as involved in worldly dominion; 
and of the soul, in the casting Himself down from the pin- 
nacle of the Temple in order to save Himself by Hivine 
power. He is in this last to sacrifice Himself in appear- 
ance to win the popular belief The sin is not that He who 
made the five loaves feed the multitude should make the 
stones bread, nor that the Messiah-King of the whole earth 
should possess the world’s kingdoms, nor that He who was 
lifted up to be the great High Priest of the earth should 
offer His life for the people. The sin was in transgressing 
God’s command and losing the subjecting power of His 
own will. Now see how exactly that corresponds to Adam’s 
temptation, or rather to Eve’s.” 

“ I see,” said the young man thoughtfully ; “ I see there 
is more in it than I fancied. But what of that which fol- 
loAVS? God inflicts death as the penalty for a single sin: 
is not that hard ?” 

“ No, it is consequence — merciful consequence. You say 
you left your prejudices at Rotterdam — but how about your 
New England Harvard prejudice in favor of the sanctity 
of human life? Is death never a blessing?” 

“I confess I never thought it so. I read Bulwer’s 
‘ Zanoni’ in College, and I longed for Mejnour’s power of 
indefinite living. Life is so short and so glorious.” 

Gardiner smiled sadly, and then said : “ Death is an ulti- 
mate fact for humanity at any rate — apart from revelation; 
but how could Adam live for ever, having yielded to his 
animal nature and let it get dominion over him ? He had 
become animal — the appetite sought for the appetite’s sake. 
An immortality of drunkenness would be an immortality 
of misery, a progressive degradation. Even Zanoni and 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


Mejnour, if I remember, won tlieir right to live by conquer- 
ing the body’s desires.” 

“Yes, you are right; and I see too that temptation to 
an innocent being must have been external. I never 
thought of that. But why was not Adam forgiven and 
restored? God is surely sufficient for that.” 

“ You must remember that man was created in the image 
of his Maker, and therefore a free agent. Restoration 
could only be by enabling him to recover his lost self-pos- 
session. He had accepted the dominion of an evil power, 
for, as you say, the temptation must have been external. 
Now that is given in hope. Eve is promised that from her 
seed shall come the Deliverer. And the first institution 
for fulfilling that promise is one which directly meets the 
animal tendency — the institution of the family. Take 
Genesis, and you will find it the record of family life. 
There is a priesthood of the first-born. Cain oflfers an un- 
worthy offering — not sacrifice — but purchase. He gives 
the fruits of the ground. God’s bounty he claims as his 
own possession. Abel’s offering is sacrifice, the shedding 
of blood — according to appointed type of a death to come. 
Death which ends the dominion of the flesh, the world, and 
Satan, is to be the gate of life. This world has been un- 
paradised to man by his own sin. God gives him the hope 
of a new and better one. What is the historic fact of all 
primal and savage races? They are families, tribes, clans: 
the head is the born head and King and Patriarch. God, 
in the calling of Abraham, developes the state. The Jew- 
ish theocracy introduces a new order into the world. The 
Asian system, which in India and China still exists, is 
based upon the family. The European, upon the national 
life. The American, with its Democratic theories, is the 
beginning of the Church. These three institutions — Family, 
State, and Church — are G^d’s divine appointment corres- 
pondent to the physical, intellectual, and spiritual elements 
in man to work out his restoration.” 

“ That I like ; it seems to me grand : but how does the 
Mediatorship of Jesus come in ?” 

“ When you come to understand the Church you will see. 
But in the first place what was man’s offence in essence ? 
Disobedience : now, to renew the race, it was necesssry that 
it be obedient, and to that the obedience of a Federal head 


BRYAN ^lAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


13 


was necessary. The Church is the Church of Christ. It is 
His humanity possessing the race. Its condition is unity 
with Him and in Him.” 

“You get beyond me there, sir. I have no idea of a 
Church beyond that of a worshipping assembly, and I must 
say I think the private, personal devotion much better than 

most of the worship I see ; and yet Last summer I 

was in Munich. I strayed into the Pfarrer Kirche — the 
new one. There was no one there but a peasant woman 
and her little one. She knelt down with the child in her 
arms, put its little hands together, and made it repeat after 
her a prayer. It brought the tears into my eyes, and I 
would have given anything for her faith and some one to 
lead me as a little child into some sort of belief and desire 
of prayer.” 

“ Have you ever attended the Church services — I mean 
the Episcopal Church ?” 

“Yes, now and then, and they always pleased me: but I 
couldn’t find the places ; and then there seemed so little 
reality about them, and the sermons were so flat and 
flimsy — pious homilies about Joseph and his brethren, like 
good little story-books. I tried hard to be a zealous Uni- 
tarian, but you see it has led me into questioning every- 
thing. Only I know,” — and here he broke out into start- 
ling energy — “ I know the Saviour’s teachings are true — 
the Sermon on the Mount: the rest is all Jewish to me. 
I can’t comprehend it. I was very eager in reform move- 
ments at home, but they were all so one-sided and full of 
Uhe’ cause. The Abolitionists were so terribly bitter, and 
the Temperance men so narrow and ignorant, and the So- 
cialists — I hung by them a good while — simple, impracti- 
cable. Living in phalansteries did not reform the world, 
as by the most able demonstration it should. One-half 
would try to speculate on the other half. I thought it best 
to come away and see Europe. The world suited me very 
well. I had enough to live on in it, and the rest was all 
visionary. I suppose I have turned Epicurean — but why 
not?” 

“ If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
we die,” said Gardiner, quietly. 

They sat silently for a few moments, and then the young 
man resumed : “ I wish I could see more of you, sir ; you 
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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


seem to have clear views at least; perhaps you could teach 
me. May I ask your route?” 

“I am going on to Bologna, to-morrow, to meet my 
mother and some young friends with her ; and then we in- 
tend, if nothing happens to turn us back, to spend a part 
of the winter in Rome — at least to be there during the 
Christmas season.” 

“ I go to Rome to-morrow ; we may meet.” 

“ I hope so,” said Gardiner. 

“ I suppose we all bank at Prince Torlonia’s, and there 
we can learn each other's address.” The young man drew 
from his diary a card and handed it to the visitor : upon it 
was simply printed, in old English black-letter, the name, 
Bryan Maurice. 

“ And now,” said Gardiner, “ before we part, do me one 
favor. lam in orders, and as we are strangers in a strange 
land together we ought to remember Who it is by Whose 
care we are guided. Will you share my worship, even 
though I trespass upon your Unitarian ideas a little?” 

“Certainly,” said Maurice; and without farther speech 
Gardiner took up the pocket-Bible and read the first chap- 
ter of St. John’s Gospel. The words fell with metallic dis- 
tinctness upon the ear of the young man. The strangeness 
of the whole thing gave them power, and for the first time 
in his life the idea came to him of the preexistence of the 
Saviour to the human life of Jesus upon earth. As he 
finished the chapter, Gardiner, simply saying, “Let us 
pray,” knelt down beside the little table. IMaurice’s first 
impulse was simply to bow his face upon his hands, but 
something in him made him ashamed of this, and he, too, 
for the first time in his life, knelt in worship. 

Whether the clergyman was extemporizing, or reading 
from a book, or repeating from memory, he knew not. He 
did not look up, but the words flowed readily. A series of 
brief prayers — each complete in itself, yet following as by a 
subtle law of harmony — each with a central thought, and 
in language that, even in the midst of his deep emotion, 
struck him as of rare beauty, then followed, ending with the 
Lord’s Prayer and the simple and scriptural benediction 
which, even in the Unitarian pulpit, had been familiar to 
him — a relic of its ancient Puritan faith. Silence follov/ed, 
and in that moment’s pause, ere either rose from his knees, 


BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


15 


a flood of unformed thoughts rushed upon the young man’s 
mind. 

Gardiner rose presently, and taking up his travelling- 
case, held out his hand, saying, “Good-night! I leave 
early in the morning, and shall not see you again,” pressed 
the hand held out to him, and was gone. 

Maurice would fain have sate longer, but the obstinate 
fire had died to ashes, and the cold drove him to his bed. 


CHAPTER II. 


T he next morning Maurice was roused by his vetiiro at 
the early dawn, after the uncomfortable fashion of that 
class, who will persist in beginning a day’s journey which 
shall end in the middle of the afternoon, before the cock- 
crowing. While he was sipping his cup of weak coffee, and 
trying to persuade himself that the lukewarm raw egg 
which was served with it was eatable, the Cameriere brought 
his bill, and with it a small package, which in pantomime 
he intimated to Maurice was for him. At the same moment, 
the impatient -yeitfro appeared and seized the travelling-trunk, 
volubly pouring forth, meanwhile, an appeal to the traveller. 
He could only slip the packet into his coat pocket, and 
make up from the strange coins in his purse the amount of 
the bill, not forgetting the Cameriere’s **huono mano.'^ 

It was too dark when he entered the vehicle to do aught 
but resume the slumber from which he had been too early 
called ; and when he woke, it was broad day. He remem- 
bered the packet in his coat, and drew it forth. It was 
simply addressed to him, with the number of his room at 
the inn. He tore off the wrapper, and found a small prayer- 
book of the American Episcopal Church, with the name 
“S. Gardiner” written in a thin, clear hand on the fly-leaf. 
It was a small octavo, somewhat worn, with a plain gilt 
cross upon either cover. He spent some time turning over 
its pages. At first it interested him much, for his college 
training enabled him to appreciate the pure English of its 
style. It was something new to read in the Gospels and 
Epistles the Scripture without separation into texts. The 
Psalter caught his eye, and something unfamiliar in the 
twenty-third Psalm, which he had often heard chanted in 
the Unitarian service, led him to take out his pocket-Bibh 
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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


17 


and compare the two. In spite of his avowed intention to 
treat the Bible as a common book, it shocked his feeling of 
reverence a little to find the entire version differing. So, 
j>romising himself to examine it hereafter in detail, he 
turned to the hymns at the end. They did not please him. 
There was a directness of devout expression, an orthodoxy, 
it seemed to him, which did not suit the refined reticence of 
Harvard. So the book went into his pocket again, and the 
rest of the day he saw it no more. At night, however, he 
took it and tried to use it, but could find nothing exactly 
appropriate to his mood of mind ; the service for evening 
prayer in families struck him as lengthy and wanting in 
power. If that was the book Gardiner had used, as he 
suspected, it had lost its magic. 

At Ancona INIaurice caught the diligence for Rome. Shut 
up in the interior with three others — a German, an Italian, 
and a Frenchman — the journey was passed in a dreamy 
vicissitude of mountain scenery and nights of broken slum- 
bers — of strange dinners at dirty inns— of a polyglot con- 
versation and general fraternizing of travellers — but all of 
it wholly external. It did him good, however — gave tone 
and balance to his mind, which had been growing morbid 
in his soliRiry travel. 

Only once came a recurrence to his former thoughts. It 
was one morning when they sto])ped to breakfast at Terni. 
A heavy-looking coach, profusely gilt, wMth a cardinal’s hat 
emblazoned on the panels, stood at the door of the albergo. 
The cardinal, a sour-looking, elderly man, with long robes, 
under which his red stockings appeared, was just alighting. 
The Italian uncovered, crossed himself, and knelt on the 
dirty pavement. The Frenchman took off his hat, and 
Maurice did the same. The German slipped into the inn, 
with a shrug of his shoulders. It was an hour after, as they 
were ascending a steep hill, and the four passengers of the 
interior got out to walk, that the German, an optician in the 
Corso at Rome, drew alongside of Maurice, and said, 
abruptly — “ Why did you, an American and a republican, 
bow to that priest?” 

“ Oh,” said Maurice, “ I don’t know — I like to be civil — 
it is the custom of the country.” 

“ Ah, ye&, but to a priest — to a cardinal. You are not a 
Catholic?” 


18 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


“ No, I am a Protestant — I suppose — that is — I am no- 
thing.” 

“ Ah, so — that is good : then you understand me. These 
priests are the curse of Italy. I hate them. I have to go 

to mass, once a year, at Easter — or else Yes, I have to, 

hut then I believe nothing — that a bit of bread is God — 
well, it may be as much God as there is, but I believe none 
of it. Luther began, but Strauss and the Herr Doctor 
Bauer of Tubingen, and the great Schwegeler, have taken 
it up. Do you read the French? Well, you must read 
the philosophie positif — that is grand, that is good. It is 
only in a republic, where you have no kings or priests, that 
you can think. My business is good here, or I would go to 
America. When the good time comes, we will put down 
all these priests and the Holy Father the Pope — and have 
no mass and no marriage and no property any more.” 

Maurice was not quite delighted with this plain unveil- 
ing of infidelity in its simple form, nor did he relish the 
dissertation against marriage which followed. He had 
been brought up purely, like most New England Unitarian 
boys, but without, of course, the abiding scriptural reason 
that his body was the temple of the Holy Spirit — which, as 
it never had been made so in baptism, he had never felt. 

But he was not prepared for'the deliberate denial of all 
chastity to woman or of all restraint to man. The conver- 
sation, which was mainly on the German’s part, haunted 
him all day long, and mingled in his weary dreams in the 
corner of the diligence that night. It was the pitiless 
reduction to its lowest terms of his own half-formed 
theories. 

He woke from his restless sleep the next morning as in 
the gray dawn they passed the Milvian Bridge. “ Sehen 
Sie, mein Herr,” said the German, good-naturedly, “das ist 
Bom.” Maurice leant absorbed out of the carriage-window. 
There was a long line of dim wall with a shadowy dome 
towering above, and the huge mass of the Vatican stretch- 
ing away beside it. He watched and watched till the high 
vineyard-wall of the road hid the view, and then sank back 
in his corner with his travelling-cap pulled over his eyes. 
Tears were in them. There was a strange spell in the sight 
of Borne, of St. Peter’s, and a yearning, longing thought 
that his fate lay hidden within those walls. An hour after, 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


19 


he caught a hurried glimpse of the Porto del Popolo, and 
then of the tall Column of Antonine, and found himself 
gazing up at a range of crumbling Corinthian pillars, with 
only a fragment of entablature above, and at the same time 
in the midst of a mob of porters, custom-house officers, and 
the like. The instincts of travel returned ; the bribery, 
and the trunk-opening, and the carriage-calling were gone 
through with, and in another five minutes Maurice found 
himself at the door of the Hotel d’Angleterre. A slight- 
built, delicate-looking youth was just coming down the 
broad staircase. He stopped a moment, and then seizing 
Maurice by the hand, exclaimed, “ How are you, old fel- 
low? — this is jolly — I am so glad to see you. There are 
several of the boys here, but you are the only Hasty Pud — 
of the whole lot. 1 am delighted to get a man, too, who 
will care about pictures and ruins and all that. I’ve been 
here three weeks. Come, get your room and dress, and 
then we will go to breakfast.” 

Just then a porter with a trunk ran against the speaker, 
and startled him a little. He caught his breath, and the 
effort brought on a sharp fit of coughing. When that was 
over, Maurice had engaged his room, and his friend was 
following him up-stairs. 

“You see,” said he, speaking slowly, “I — have — not — 
got rid of this cough ; but I’m better — much better.” 

Better if he was, when he reached mimero sette sei, al terzo, 
he could only throw himself on the bed, while Maurice went 
through the very necessary and much longed-for ablutions 
which three days and nights of diligence-travel rendered 
indispensable. When Maurice began to dress, however, 
his speech returned. Floods of questions were poured forth 
on both sides, and plans formed enough to occupy a twelve- 
month instead of a winter. 

It was quite late when they descended again to the salle 
a manger to breakfast. There were only a couple of the 
usual travelling Englishmen sitting over “ Galignani,” tea, 
and toast, at the far end of the table. The two young men 
hardly hushed their joyous conversation a tone as they 
rattled on. 

“Where first?” said Goodstowe, as Maurice gave signs 
of rest to his apparently unappeasable appetite — “St 
Peter’s, or the Coliseum ?” 


20 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


“ W Jl, I must go to Torlonia’s, for letters and money — 
which way is that?” 

“ Oh, that’s toward the Old City — all right — come along. 
Where did you say Byron Brooks had gone? — taken to 
preaching? What a fellow? Does Iced Lem-on-ade still 
spree it as he used to ? I met the Gorgeous Sunbeam when 
I came out, in Paris, and he was richer than ever — seven 
colors in his raiment — the lilies of the field would hardly 
hold a candle to him. No, I don’t mean that, you know,” 
said Frank Goodstowe, coloring-up. “I have been so 

much with H and P , and that set, that I pick up 

their talk before I know it.” 

“ What’s the harm in that?” said Maurice, wonderingly. 

“ Why, you know, I’m sure, where that comparison is 
used, and by whom. Look,” said Frank, breaking off sud- 
denly — “ look ! — this is Monte Cavallo, and those are the 
horses of Phidias and Praxiteles. We’re on the Quirinal.” 

It was a warm winter-noon when they came to the 
Forum and passed down the Appian Way through the 
Arch of Titus. The soft air came pleasantly from the 
Campagna, and Maurice w^as in an ecstasy of pleasure. 
Horace and Byron and Cicero and Hans Andersen were all 
mingling together in his memory, as place after place came 
before him with that familiar likeness of unlikeness with 
which the Old-World scenes appear to the young American 
who has pored over the pictures of them from his infancy. 
Mere strangeness is nothing ; it is the charm of finding the 
inward vision suddenly realized in the outward, and yet so 
differently, which makes travel such a well of delights. 
Maurice would neither go on nor linger, but w'as for read- 
ing every inscription through, and yet for hastening at once 
to the Coliseum — with the unreasonable appetite of a child 
let loose in a confectioner’s. 


CHAPTER III 



T last, however, Frank, who was four weeks older in 


A Roman experiences, contrived to drag Maurice away 
and piloted him safely past the Golden House of Nero and 
around to the unruined side of the Coliseum, where the 
outer-wall frowns in undiminished grandeur. They stood 
in the shadow, and Maurice’s eager eye seemed to take in 
a photograph of the whole, from the wild grasses tufting 
the cornice, to the crannies fretting the fallen stones at the 
base. There was a Latin inscription upon a tablet let into 
the front. Maurice studied it for a moment, at first idly, 
with the instinct of an American student of the classics, 
too eager over every bit of the ancient tongue to distin- 
guish between the Ciceronian and the Monastic. 

Suddenly he broke out in a tone of thorough surprise — 
“ Why, Frank, this is a church dedicated to the Martyrs.” 

“ Well,” said Goodstowe, “go a step further and you will 
see where they.suffered.” 

They entered the vast oval, and there in the centre w^as 
reared a plain cross. Around the arena were built the 
canopied altars of the Romish Church. Maurice sat down 
upon the stone benches of the lower tier in a fit of musing. 
Frank, the most indulgent of ciceroni, would not disturb 
him. 

At length he broke the silence. 

“ Why, Frank,” said he, “ here is the same Church to 
which the Martyrs and Apostles belonged.” 

“ Of course it is : did you never think of that before ?” 

“ Why, no! — yes — that is, I never felt it before.” Then, 
after a pause, “ This is, I suppose, the true Church.” 

He brought out the words slowly and with a pained 
expression, like one who admits a disagreeable truth. F rank 
met the inquiry with a qufet smile, which showed that he 


21 


22 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


was not taken by surprise, but had felt and mastered the 
difficulty. He pointed in the direction of the Capitol, and 
quietly said, “Is this city the Home of the Consuls of the 
Empire? As we came down the Appian, we saw that the 
ancient arches and the old pavement stood twelve feet be- 
low the present level. It no longer occupies the same site ; 
it has moved away from that and left the old places desolate. 
That is the position of the Roman Church. It is like the 
Me^liseval Italian city reared over the grave of the ancient 
Republican and Imperial one.” 

“Then,” said Maurice, “there is no true Church, for all 
modern Churches came from Rome — that is, if your illus- 
tration holds good ; which I don’t admit and don’t deny.” 

“ Did Republican Government perish because the Roman 
Republic became an empire?” 

“No,” said Maurice, “but Roman Republicanism did. 
American Republicanism may be a revival^ but it is not a 
continuation of Roman.” 

“I am fairly caught,” said Frank; “but — but — I want 
to put the thing in another way. Suppose the Roman Re- 
publicanism had been transplanted into England, and so 
brought to us — then the failure of the source would not 
affect the continuation. Christianity is not dead because 
Jerusalem, where it originated, fell into the hands of the 
Mahometans.” 

“Yes, very good; but you don’t mean to say that our 
churches in America were so transplanted ?” 

“ I mean to say that the One Holy Catholic Church has 
its representative in America now.” 

“ Well, I don’t understand all this ; I’ll think it up some 
time — but — I say — let us get up on these walls — this is so 
glorious.” And Maurice scrambled and roamed, unheeding 
Frank’s short breathing and occasional coughs, till the 
latter plead fatigue, and begged to return to the hotel. 
Maurice assented, and seeing Frank really looked ill, had 
the prudence to call a coach which was at hand near the 
Coliseum — its driver on the lookout for stray tourists. Frank 
had to lie down till dinner, and Maurice spent the time in 
writing up his journal and a letter or two. 

At the table dliote they met a large body of travellers — 
all English or Americana — and the conversation was quite 
general and lively upon what had been or was to be seen. 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


23 


It was the 24th December, and everybody was full of the 
(Christmas Eve ceremonies which were to come off at the 
Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. Frank, refreshed by 
sleep and his dinner, agreed to go. Young men are rarely 
tolerant of invalidism, especially in their equals, and Mau- 
rice could not comprehend Frank’s willingness to lose any 
one of the great annual sights. So Frank, a little against 
his better judgment, and himself rather eager, ventured out 
again. 

The night was clear, bright, and moonlit ; slightly frosty, 
and the air brisk and keen. They found the great church 
thronged. Its gilded ceiling glimmered in -the blaze of 
innumerable wax candles. There was a buzz and murmur 
of tourists in the intervals of the chanting — a crowding to 
catch a glimpse of the procession of the Pope in his chair, 
with the white peacock fans on either side, as he was borne 
between ranks of soldiers. The marvellous cradle was 
solemnly carried up the nave. Maurice remembered that 
Bethlehem stable had only a manger. The heat, and dust, 
and incense were all but stifling. They had to stand until 
Frank, nearly fainting, had to beg Bryan to leave. It was 
not easy to force one’s way through the crowd. Frank was 
sharply elbowed by a great burly young English Jesuit from 
the Propaganda, and pressed his hand upon his panting 
chest with a gesture and look of pain. At last they reached 
the silent portico and the open air. Frank drew a long 
breath of relief, and then, as the keen night air filled his 
lungs, coughed terribly. At the end of his attack he was 
spitting blood. Then Maurice, really alarmed, rushed up 
to a carriage, and importuned the driver in his best French. 
The man hesitated, but a large round scudo shining in the 
moonlight prevailed. Maurice almost lifted Frank in, and 
then the driver whipped up his horses into a run, that he 
might be back in time for his own proper fares, for whom 
he was waiting. The jolting over the pavements did Frank’s 
cough no good, and when he reached the Angleterre he was 
quite exhausted. Luigi, Frank’s courier, was summoned, 
and the two got Frank to bed and administered a sedative 
for the cough, which gave temporary relief. Bryan would 
Imve watched till Frank slept, but Frank said “ No and 
only asked to be let to rest. 


24 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


^‘Is there anything more I can do?” said Maurice at the 
room-door. 

“Yes,” said Frank, “just one thing. My eyes pain me — 
please shade the light, and then” — he hesitated a moment 
— “please take this little book and read to me the prayers 
on this page.” 

Maurice felt sadly embarrassed, but he did not like lo 
show it. He took the book, and standing by the bedside — 
for he could not in fact well kneel, and did not like to sit — 
read, in as reverential a manner as he knew how, the col- 
lects on the designated page of the little manual. When he 
ended, Frank put out his hand, pressed that of Maurice, 
and said, in a whisper, “ Thank you, dear Bryan, — Christ 
bless you, — good-night.” 

Maurice went away with an undefined sense of apprehen- 
sion and sadness. He strolled out to the Piazza di Spagna 
and passed a half-hour with his cigar upon the glorious 
Spanish steps, where by day the models of the paintei's 
cluster, and old Peppo, king of the beggars, whom every 
one ever in Rome knows so well, shambles round on his 
stumps, and cries in his lusty voice, Giomo, Sif/nore/* 

He thought of home, of his sick friend, and of the Christmas 
Eve service he had once witnessed in a little church in his 
native town. Gradually his musings went Bethlehem-wards, 
and he found himself wondering why Christmas Eve should 
so long have been kept in the world. “ There is something 
in it,” he said at last to himself — “the Bible cannot be a 
collection of myths — T give up the legendaiy theory.” 

The next morning Maurice stole softly to Frank’s room. 
The door was gently opened, in answer to his light tap, bv 
the watchful Luigi. “ He sleep, ’celenza/' said the courier, 
forming the words with his lips, but scarcely making a 
sound. “ If he sleep he will do well,” murmured Maurice, 
little thinking of the ominous coincidence in his wmrds. So 
he went down, relieved in mind, to the breakfast-table, and 
there, as was his wont, made acquaintance with a fellow’- 
traveller, a long-legged Lieutenant of an East Indian regi- 
ment, going home by the overland route, on leave, — and the 
two agreed to go to St. Peter’s togetlier. 

“By Jove,” said the Englishman, when in the street,—' 
“ how odd one feels in a dress-coat in the morning, — it’s like 
going to a funeral, d’ ye know.” 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


25 


Both the young men did feel rather awkwardly, attired 
in solemn black, without even a paletot to cover their sable- 
ness. Swarms of beggars dashed alongside as they strode 
down the Via Babuino. The Lieutenant swore at them in 
Hindostanee. Maurice gave a copper coin or two to one of 
the most hideously repulsive ; but when a wretch insisted 
upon stripping the cloth from his face to show the cancer 
which half covered it, (artistically painted there by Smud- 
gers, of the Cafe Greco, that very morning,) he raised his 
hand threateningly. 

“I say,” said the Lieutenant, “don’t do that now, you’ll 
have the police on you ; here’s a dodge I was put up to in 
Florence, the other day,” — and he made a queer back- 
handed shake with his right forefinger, at which free- 
masonry the beggar gave a knowing look and fell back at 
once. They passed on toward the Bridge of St. Angelo. 

“ I say, I suppose we shall have to miss chapel,” con- 
tinued he. “I don’t quite like that — for I never did stay 
away from church on a Christmas day ; but then it’s the 
Stilton to do High Mass at St. Peter’s, and then there’s an 
awful Puseyite mess at the chapel — candles and flowers and 
all that — and one might as well have the real turtle as the 
mock. I’m not one of your beastly Low Churchmen, either; 
but I’m an old Kugby fellow, and I can’t go this Oxford 
nonsense. But,” he added, “ I beg your pardon — perhaps 
you are in that way.” 

“ Oh, no,” said Maurice, “not at all ; in fact, I don’t well 
know what it means. I am not in the habit of going to 
church Christmas day. We do not in America, except a 
few Episcopalians.” 

“You don’t mean that you’re a Dissenter? Come, now, 
you are too good a fellow for that.” 

“Well, I am not anything just now,” said Maurice, 
rather embarrassed. 

The young Briton gave a broad stare — the two could 
hardly make each other out. “ But come, now, that won’t 
do, you know,” said the Englishman. “ You had better go 
out to India and see what those beggars out there are like, 
and you’d soon settle yourself I can’t say what I mean,” he 
went on, getting red in the face and beginning to stammer, 
“ but — but a man must believe if he has work to do in the 
world, and got to be under fire and do his duty by a lot of 
3 


26 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


these poor ignorant soldiers. By Jove, if I didn’t believe I 
should have gone to the bad long ago. However, perhaps, 
it’s different in America — though I can’t for the life of me 
see how.” 

“ May be,” said Maurice, half to himself, “ I shall find 
what I want here. How superb !” he cried, as they entered 
upon the vast piazza of St. Peter’s and the whole magnificent 
view broke upon them. 

The Lieutenant shook his head and held his peace, honestly 
bewildered at such a strange phenomenon as the young 
skeptic. There was a gentleness, an almost guileless seeming 
about Maurice, appearing in his tones and manners, which 
drew every one he met toward him, and that which made 
the Englishman call him, upon their first acquaintance, “ a 
good fellow,” served to perplex thoroughly the latter. 

No more conversation passed between them till they 
reached the entrance. They were admitted at once, leaving 
behind a dozen unfortunates, who had thouglit to palm off 
a sham upon the infallible Church by pinning up their 
frock-coat skirts into the semblance of dress-coat tails. The 
infallible Church, being well versed in all varieties of shams, 
soon detected these impostors, and brought them to shame 
and confusion of face. 

The vast nave was not crowded ; it never is. It seems as 
if all Rome, and her foreign visitors to boot, could not crowd 
it. But when they reached the High Altar under the dome, 
they found themselves in a mob of tourists, monks, and 
officers, rendering it difficult for them to catch a clear view 
of what was going on. Behind the open space where they 
stood, were temporary boxes, draped with scarlet, in which 
sat ladies in black, with black veiled heads, and bonnetless. 
The Englishman’s length of limb enabled him to see over 
the crowd, but Maurice, who was shorter, soon left him, and 
elbowed his way through the throng to a front place. The 
spectacle was less imposing than he expected. The poor old 
Pope had a wearied look while the tedious ceremonies went on 
— the taking off* and putting on of numerous vestments, with 
inaudible Latin prayers murmured the wdiile — flourishes of 
the thurible and the like — ceremonies to the young New 
Englander altogether unintelligible. What struck him espe- 
cially, was the uninterested manner of most of the high 
ecclesiastics, especially as it contrasted with the rapt devo- 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


27 


tion of the contadini kneeling in the outside space where 
the multitude were permitted, and the absorbed, almost 
ecstatic worship of a few ladies who occupied private boxes 
near the Papal throne. It was whispered in the crowd that 
these were English ladies of high rank, and Maurice caught 
the whispered name of a recent distinguished pervert, whose 
novels he remembered to have read. 

The High Altar of St. Peter’s stands directly beneath the 
mighty dome. Four hundred feet above it in the air is the 
lantern upon which the ball and cross are built. A canopy, 
ninety feet in height, is over the altar. Behind it is the 
throne, in the upper arm of the Latin cross, in which St. 
Peter’s is constructed, a space large as one of the largest 
American churches, but which, in St. Peter’s, appears 
scarcely more than a recess. 

Near the Pope’s Throne is the huge monument of that 
Pontiff who decked it before his death with the figures of 
his mistresses, sculptured as allegory ; contrary to the usual 
custom, his tiara is not placed on his head, but laid at his 
feet, in token of the extraordinary and shameless vileness 
of his life. 

The way from the throne to the altar was covered with a 
temporary carpet, and on each side were ranged the Guarda 
Nobile, each a noble of Borne, in their splendid uniform. 
They stood, with swords drawn, motionless military statues, 
only their crested cavalry helmets betraying, by a move- 
ment of their flowing horse-tails, that they possessed life. 

At last the long services drew to a close. The Pope left 
his throne and advanced toward the altar, the train of his 
heavy robes upborne by Acolytes. He knelt for a moment, 
and then, amid a stillness like the hush of a summer noon- 
tide, took into his hands the sacred emblems. 

He pronounced the words of consecration, probably the 
ancient form which- Linus and Anacletus had used, and 
then, with both hands, he raised high the jewelled and glit- 
tering Monstrance. Every head was bowed ; the Guarda 
Nobile, with the perfect oneness of military movement, sank 
on one knee, and lowered their shining swords till their 
points clashed upon the pavement, while a burst of tri- 
umphant music rang through the vast church and ecliood 
down the miglity arches of the nave and aisles. Chanting 
voices, clear and high and heavenly sweet, the voices of the 


28 


BRYAN IklAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


fiopraiii and choir-boys, sounded with it. The impressii-n 
was overwhelming, irresistible, and Maurice bowed his head. 
Once more the Pontiff’s sonorous voice was the only sound, 
the “ PIic EBT Sanguis Meus” clearly heard, and the cha- 
lice was raised with the same dramatic splendor of effect. 
For a few seconds the genius of Roman art enveloped 
Maurice in its spell, and he bent his knee and hid his face 
with his hands, knowing not why. It was a brief trance. 
As he rose with the rest, right before him was a monk, 
whose greasy woollen robe was redolent of other odors than 
that of sanctity, and whose face, as he turned to leer at the 
ladies in the boxes, was the repulsive mask of a satyr. 

The finale came soon. The Pope, with a sigh of relief, 
returned to his throne, and was presently borne out on his 
dizzy seat; a performance so “tottlish,” (to use a child’s 
word,) as to be rather ludicrous than otherwise. 

Maurice looked ar'^und for his English friend, but he was 
lost in the crowd m)w hurrying toward the entrance. PTe 
loitered behind, for it was his first visit to St. Peter’s. He 
soon worked into the clearer region of the side aisle, and 
paused to read the inscription of that tablet whereon is 
carved, “ Henricus IX. Rex Angliterrje.” Something, 
very like a disturbance, near, interrupted his reverie o\ er 
the Stuarts— by the way, always to the educated New Eng- 
lander a most romantic theme, in which Scott and Carlyle 
oddly contend for mastery. He saw a couple of ladies 
were in trouble. An Italian, of the lower orders, was an- 
noying them with importunities ; Maurice could not tell 
wherefore. He saw them shrink back from the man’s volu- 
bility, and heard a few w^ords of English spoken by the 
elder to the younger. He hurried to their aid, and learned 
in a word their difficulty. The fellow claimed that they 
had engaged him as guide, he having evidently mistaken 
his party. Maurice spoke a few words in French to the 
man, and sent him, grumbling, away. Then turned to the 
ladies, and asked what could he do for them ? They took 
in his position at a glance, and, evidently relieved a little, 
the elder lady spoke. They were seeking their carriage. 
Her son, she said, was a clergyman ; but, not wearing the 
regulation dress-coat, had been separated from them at the 
door. They were to meet in the portico, and were seeking 
him when the Italian had followed and annoyed them 


BKYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


29 


Maurice at once offered his services, saying, “I am an 
American.” The elder lady was tall, her dark curls here 
and there touched with gray, her features high and digni- 
fied, and about her face Maurice thought he saw a familiar 
look. “ Since you are a countryman,” said she, “ we will 
trouble you as far as our carriage. I thank you very 
much.” 

They made their way to the open air, and Maurice, find- 
ing a place where the ladies could stand in safety, went in 
search of their coach, the number of which they had for- 
tunately taken. It was not easy in such a jam to find the 
right one ; and when he returned he found a tall gentleman 
standing beside them, who turned, and Maurice beheld the 
familiar face of Gardiner. Explanations, warm greetings, 
and the like, follow. Maurice was offered the spare seat in 
their carriage — and found that they were at the Angleterre 
also. He was presented in form by Gardiner to his mother 
and his young niece. Miss Maud I)e Forrest. Once seated 
in the carriage as her vis-a-vis, Maurice was enabled to see 
and scan the faces of his new acquaintance. The elder 
lady we have described before. The younger did not 
appear to be a relative, for she was a blonde. She, in spite 
of her English name, was an American, with the delicacy 
of feature so characteristic of the spring-tide of our girlhood. 
Her eyes were a deep blue, and there was a dark shading 
of the braids of hair which crossed her forehead which dis- 
tinguished them from the washed-out, colorless tresses of 
Germany. It was the hue Bryant has so admirably hit 
off in a single line — 

Brown in the shadow and gold in the sun.” 

There was, however, in somewhat of contrast to the gentle- 
ness of the whole upper face, a touch of firmness about the 
small mouth, and a rather decided rounding of the chin, 
which gave character to the face at the cost of pure con- 
formity to the classic statuesque type. Like other ladies 
that day, she was dressed in black, with a black lace veil. 

The conversation soon turned upon the ceremonies wit- 
nessed. Gardiner remarked that he had gained a tolerably 
good view of them. “You know, mother,” he said, “I went 
back to the hotel and got a dress-coat; but could not join 


80 


BRYiiN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


service 'vvith the Bishop of Gibraltar in his parlor this 

morning, it did not matter ; and after what H said to 

me last night, I thought it was not best to commit myself 

by being present at ’s absurd performances there. I 

find it is quite a party matter with our friends, and on 
their account I would not compromise myself.” 

Maurice himself felt a slight revulsion of feeling at his 
own enthusiasm, and with the audacity of young New 
England liberalism jested at the affair. “ I wonder that 
such mummery could move any one. The elevation of the 
Host was very fine, but what meaning is there in it all ? 
What is the Host? I’m sure I don’t know.” The young 
lady looked at him with a serious look of astonishment, and 
then glanced rather timidly at her uncle. 

“ Oh, but. Miss He Forrest, I’m sure you don’t know,” 
continued Bryan. “Young ladies are always very learned 
in all foreign customs ; but unless you are a Catholic — 
You don’t belong to the Catholic Church, I suppose?” 

“ I trust I do,” she replied, and was about to add some- 
thing more, but Maurice, coloring deeply, interrupted her. 

“ Oh ! I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon — sincerely. 
I did not dream of it for a moment ; please excuse me — let 
us talk of something else. I shall offend you by my unlucky 
blunders.” 

Maud saw his error, but the moment of explanation 
slipped away, and she seriously doubted whether he could 
be readily made to comprehend what she meant. So she 
merely smiled to show she was’ not offended, and the con- 
versation took a different turn. 

“ Have you seen any of the galleries yet ?” he asked. 

“Not yet,” said she. “We begin to-morrow at the Bor- 
ghese.” 

“ Oh ! I am going there too. Frank Goodstowe, my 
friend, whom I met here, says it is splendid.” 

“ That tall gentleman you were with at St. Peter’s ?” said 
the elder lady. Miss He Forrest said nothing, but became 
suddenly paler. 

“ Oh, no,” said Maurice ; “ Frank is ill at the hotel, poor 
fellow; his lungs are delicate, and he has had a slight attack 
of bleeding.” 

“ Is he from S , in New York State?” continued Mrs. 

Gardiner. 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


31 


“ I think he ia ; I knew him at Harvard ; he was my 
classmate; a capital fellow; of your Church, too,” said 
Maurice, with a slight stress on the pronoun, turn in or to 
Gardiner. “ We used to call him the parson, in college, 
but a better fellow never lived; — not like the Orthodox 
generally, who are not always gentlemen, and who some- 
times will give information to the faculty, and always stand 
out against rebellions.” 

“ Did he take a good degree?” asked Gardiner. 

‘Oh yes, sir, in the second eight; might have been in the 
first; was one of our best writers and speakers, but would 
not take the trouble ; rather preferred to mouse round in 
the library.” He was fond of the river, too. I have had 
many a glorious pull with him by moonlight, in a fisher 
man’s dory he kept, down through the bridges to the old 
Powder-house wharf.” 

Just then the carriage stopped at the Angleterre. Mau- 
rice had scarcely time to hand out the ladies, when his arm 
was touched by Luigi, on the watch for him. He turned, 
and the deep grief on the worthy courier’s face made him 
forget the ladies, and Gardiner, and everything else. 

“ II Signore Francesco is very bad. Another” — and 
Luigi touched his lungs in expressive pantomime. Maurice 
waited for no more, but sprang up the stairs, three at a 
time. Luigi followed more slowly. As Maurice entered 
Frank’s room he found him sitting up in bed — propped by 
pillows — his face ghastly pale, and the windows open, in 
spite of the cold, which at Kome is quite noticeable at 
Christmas. A young physician, an Englishman, staying 
in the hotel, was in the room, preparing a stimulant. He 
held up his finger as Maurice entered, as a warning to him 
to keep quiet. Goodstowe made a sign with his thin hand, 
which he' could hardly lift from the bedclothes, and the 
Doctor was at his side in an instant, moving with that quiet 
gliding step only learned in sick-chambers. Frank spoke 
something in a low whisper, and the medical man turned to 
Maurice and said quietly — “ Do you know of any clergy- 
man of the English or American Churches now in Kome? 
Your friend has just sent for the Chaplain here, bui it 
being Christmas Day he will probably be dining out some- 
where.” 

Just then Luigi entered. “ The chaplain Inglese is not 


32 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


cliez lui,” said he. Frank’s face was very sad to see, and 
large tears came into his eyes. 

“ Stop a moment,” said 'Maurice, “ perhaps I can do it.” 
And he was starting for the door, when Frank made an 
impetuous movement, (followed, alas, by a cough, fearful 
to hear,) which the physician’s quick eye caught, and 
arresting Maurice by one hand, he laid the other upon 
Frank’s, and bent down his ear to listen. It seemed an 
age, though in a moment Frank’s words came labored and 

hiint — “Church — clergy” “Yes, yes!” said Maurice, 

and was off. He hardly knew how, so breathless and 
instinctive was every movement, but he found himself 
knocking at Gardiner’s door. The clergyman opened it, 
meeting him with an inquiring look — almost stern — which 
softened on seeing Maurice’s agitation. The young man 
sobbed rather than spoke — “Frank is dying — wants a 
clergyman — can you come?’’ 

“ Certainly, of course,” said Gardiner ; and instantly 
tapping at the inner door of the next room en suite, he 
said — “ Mother, we will not dine till the five o’clock table 
d’hote. I am called to a sick person and, without waiting 
for a response, turned toward the corridor. 

As they went^ toward Frank’s room — “ Do you happen 
to know,” said he, “ if your friend has been confirmed?” 

“ I hardly know,” said Maurice ; “ I remember seeing a 
book on his table about Confirmation, and he had to go 
into Boston one day about that time — it was in our Junior 
year — to see the Bishop ; he missed a society-meeting by it; 
but I really can’t say, I don’t think I know what confirm- 
ing really is.” Gardiner did not reply — only nodded. 

They had by this time reached Frank’s room. As they 
went in Gardiner said, quietly — “ Peace be to this house 
and to all wuthin” — and then went at once to the sick bed- 
side. AVith a glance he seemed to take in the whole situa- 
tion. Frank’s face brightened, and a sweet, pure smile 
came over it. The physician said, respectfully, but firmly — 
“ He must not talk ; I cannot answer for it if he does.” 

“ Oh, no, of course not,” said Gardiner ; “ only make a 
sign, yes or no, to my questions. You have been baptized?” 
Frank bowed. “And confirmed?” Frank bowed again. 
“Have you ever communed?” Frank shook his head 
Badly. “You are entitled to the communion now if you 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


33 


desire it.” Frank’s face flushed, he closed his eyes a mo- 
ment, and then reverently bent his head. Without saying 
more Gardiner knelt down by the bedside, and, holding 
Frank’s hand in his, prayed for forgiveness of sins, and 
faith and penitence for this sick member of the Church. 
The physician and Maurice remained standing, but Mau- 
rice’s eyes were blinded with fast-coming tears. Then 
rising, Gardiner asked — “Dost thou believe in God, the 
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth?” and con- 
tinued through every article of the creed, Frank making a 
faint sign of assent to each. When it came to the words 
“Holy Catholic Church,” Maurice gave a slight start — 
they had acquired a new meaning to him. He was be- 
wildered, too, at the perfect readiness with wdiich each 
seemed to understand the other, and yet astonished at the 
solemnity and fitness of the whole. He had been sick, 
dangerously sick, while in college ; and after he was better, 
a clergyman, one of the Faculty, had called to see him, 
but seemed afraid to talk with him, and finally got out 
something about thankfulness to Divine Providence — he 
did not appear to like to say “ God” — in delivering him 
from sickness, and then was glad to change the subject to 
the approaching Exhibition. He remembered this now. 

“Are you able to receive the Sacrament now?” asked 
Gardiner. Frank made an affirmative sign. He turned to 
the Doctor, — “ You are a member of the English Church ; 
will you receive with him ?” 

The Doctor shook his head — “ I’m not, you know — you 
see I ought to be w’atching him.” And then stepping to 
Gardiner’s side, and drawing him to the chamber-door, said 
something in too low' a tone for any of the rest to hear. 
Gardiner replied without losing the quiet manner proper to 
a sick-room, but with a decision that allowed of no appeal, 
— “ You will be kind enough to remain in the next room till 
I call for you. I am used to sickness, and will be respon- 
sible ; I cannot have you here.” The Doctor shrugged his 
shoulders, a slight sneer curled his lip, but he walked with- 
out parley into the sitting-room. 

Gardiner turned, and after a moment’s pause, said to 
Maurice, — “You of course cannot join wdth us, but will you 
remain ? you can support your friend in your arms, as he 
a])pears too weak to sit up, and to lie dowui would suffocate 


34 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


him.” Frank’s face showed the pleasure he felt at Gardiner’s 
considerate kindness, and Maurice could not speak, so 
deeply was he touched ; but he took his place, half sitting, 
half kneeling on the bedside, and raised and held Frank 
firmly and tenderly. Gardiner left the room, beckoning to 
Luigi, who presently came back, and placed against the 
wall opposite the bed a small table, covered with a white 
cloth. In a few minutes Gardiner reappeared, followed by 
the two ladies Maurice had met that morning. Maud’s face 
was no longer pale, a bright flush burned on each cheek, 
and her lips were firmly set. She glanced quickly at Frank, 
who did not appear to notice her, and a slight shade of 
relief seemed to come over her face. Gardiner said simply, 
“ My mother and my niece,” by way of introduction. Maud 
placed herself by the head of the bed, out of the range of 
Frank’s view — but where, as it happened, from Maurice’s 
position, he could see her. The clergyman placed upon the 
little table a tiny cup of silver, and a small plate of the 
same metal. Then opening a delicate damask napkin, he 
laid a little square of bread upon it, and filled the cup with 
wine from a graceful silver flagon. He laid over them a 
veil of fine lawn, with an embroidered cross and monogram, 
worked within the circle of the crown of thorns. He placed 
an open Bible behind these, resting against the wall. Maud 
rose from her seat, and, still standing so as to be behind 
Frank, placed before him her own little prayer-book, open 
at the office of the Communion of the sick. Frank motioned 
toward the centre-table, where some books were lying. The 
elder lady took a prayer-book, — Frank’s own, — and handed 
it to him ; he found the place, and put it into Maurice’s 
disengaged hand. He said softly, “Will not you want it?” 

“ Oh no, the service is familiar to me, by heart.” 

Meanwhile Luigi had been looking curiously on. He 
crossed himself, as the Roman Catholics do, and then 
slipping into the next room, returned bringing two wax 
candles and a vase of flowers. He placed these upon the 
little table, and lighted the candles. It was quite dusk in 
the room, for the day was very cloudy, and Gardiner made 
no objection, only exchanged a word or two in French with 
Luigi, who then knelt near the foot of the bed. Gardiner 
stepped into the sitting-room a moment, — the physician 
administered a few drops of the restorative he had prepared, 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


35 


and then retired once more as Gardiner reentered in sur- 
plice and stole, and knelt down at the simple little altar he 
had prepared. After a short silent prayer he rose, and 
while the two ladies stood, read the Collect, Epistle and 
Gospel, which Maurice found in the open prayer-book before 
him. This, with the invitation to the Communion, struck 
Maurice as rather formal. The parts succeeding each other 
so rapidly, and the annunciation of each beforehand, 
seemed to ‘ him confusing and yet labored. But when 
Gardiner knelt once more, and all the voices joined in tlie 
confession, a deep awe fell upon it as he listened to th(jse 
words of fervent humility and sorrow. Yet in his state of 
mental tension, he seemed to himself to experience that 
dual personality which belongs to the passive endurance of 
great and protracted emotion, — in which one half of ourself 
appears to watch and criticise the other. He thought to 
himself, “ How can any dare to come to the Communion 
after saying such things of themselves?” He had the Yew- 
England feeling that one must be conscious of a sinless 
perfection first, — that idea which underlies all phases of 
religious thought resulting from Puritan culture. Then 
the Priest rose and pronounced the Absolution, turning 
toward Frank and holding his hand just above the young 
man’s bowed head. It seemed most personal, most direct, 
nor was this lessened by the deep authority of the low 
fervent tones. 

Then followed the “ Comfortable Words,” never to be 
forgotten after they have been heard beside the bed of 
death — the sentences which witness of the Incarnation and 
the Resurrection, the twm pillars which uphold our earthly 
life. Then Gardiner turned to the altar again and read 
the preface for Christmas Hay, and the three voices mingled 
in that rapt ascription, the song of the Angel and Arch- 
angel. Maurice thrilled through and through, and he felt 
his skeptical lightness fall from him like a cast-off garment. 
Gardiner knelt once more, and recited the prayer of hum- 
ble access. The slow, deliberate pausing upon the words 
seemed to breathe from the speaker’s very soul, and 
Maurice followed them as if for his life. 

But he was startled when Gardiner rose again, and 
taking care to stand so that Frank could see every move- 
ment, seemed, while reciting the Lord’s own act, to repeat 


3G 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


its gestures step by step. Maurice had never before seen 
the rite, excepting that day, in St. Peter’s, in the Roman 
Mass. When the Bread was literally taken and broken, 
when the Cup was touched by the Priest’s hand, a very 
strange feeling came upon him. It seemed either awfully 
real or awfully wrong, — he hardly knew which. He tried 
to follow the prayers which succeeded, but his thought 
wandered in spite of himself; and beside that, anxiety for 
Frank, whose form seemed more and more to rest helplessly 
in his arms, gained upon him. The hush in which Gardi- 
ner, kneeling, partook of both the elements, was to him 
almost unendurably long. It was a relief when the Priest 
rose, and holding the tiny Paten in his left hand, extended 
his right in benediction over his kneeling mother, while 
he said, “ The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was 
given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting 
life.” Then, laying the Bread upon her open hand, he con- 
tinued, “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ 
died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with 
thanksgiving.” He did the same Avith Maud, looked a 
moment to Luigi, who crossed himself once more, but shook 
his head, and then came to Frank. He laid his hand 
gently upon Frank’s forehead as he pronounced the first 
sentence, and then laid the rest of the Sacramental Bread 
upon his hand. GoodstoAve made an effort in vain to raise 
it to his lips, and his breath Avas faint and fluttering. 
Gardiner put it to his mouth, and Frank made an effort to 
SAvalloAV it, Avith success, but Maurice felt his Avhole frame 
shudder Avith emotion and Aveakness. The Priest then ad- 
ministered the Cup — only a few drops remaining as he came 
last to Frank. He placed the chalice to the dying lips, 
and Frank Avas just able to empty it. Gardiner had turned 
to place the vessels upon the table, and Avas just spread- 
ing the gauzy covering over them, when a cry from his 
mother made him turn quickly. Frank Avas seized Avith a 
fierce spasm, and half rose from Maurice’s shoulder, and 
then sank back again, the paleness of death upon his face, 
but Avith a smile of holy calm over all his features. Maud 
half rose and caught his drooping hand Avhich hung down 
beside the bed — felt the pulse. Luigi darted from the room, 
and summoned the Doctor. He came at once and placed 
his hand upon Frank’s heart. It had ceased to beat. He 


BIIYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


3 ^ 


bowed to Gardiner, and saying, “ I did not think be would 
last till now,” quietly left the room. They laid the lifeless 
form upon the bed and closed the eyes, while Maurice sank 
upon his knees in a great agony of tears. 

Gardiner repeated the Lord’s prayer, in which both 
ladies joined in voices broken by sobs, and then another 
prayer, which Maurice lost entirely, in the amazement of his 
sorrow. 

Then slowly, but with firmer accents, the three, rising, 
began the Gloria in Excelsis. Maurice had risen also, all 
but mechanically, and stood looking upon the silent face of 
the dead. He was half inclined to resent this continuance 
of the service as a bitter mummery — now that its purpose 
seemed ended — when a strange thought was born, as it were, 
into his mind. “ If Frank’s faith be true,” it said to him, 
“ is not this the very utterance of the released soul in its 
deliverance from earth ?” 

So it was that he knelt again with the rest, and for the 
first time in all his life was spoken above him the Apostolic 
Benediction — 

“The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, 
keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of 
God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord ; and the bless- 
ing of God Almighty — the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost — be amongst you and remain with you always I” 

4 


CHAPTER IV. 


W HEN the hush of the last moment had passed, the two 
ladies hastily left the room. Gardiner threw ofl* hia 
surplice, and said softly to Maurice, “Wait here till I re- 
turn.” In a few moments he reentered ; Maurice sat mo- 
tionless by the corpse, holding Frank’s hand in his. Luigi 
was sobbing in one corner. “ Had your friend,” said 
Gardiner, “ relatives at home to whom we ought to send ?” 

Maurice was recalled to the care of the living, as Gardiner 
saw was best he should be. “No parents,” said he. “I 
think he had an uncle, who was his guardian, but I do not 
know his name or address.” 

“ Luigi,” said the clergyman, “ Did your master give you 
any papers to take care of, lately?” 

“ Si, Signore. He write last night ; he say he die soon ; 
he tell me give it to Signor Maurigi ;” and Luigi drew from 
his breast a folded packet. It contained a note for Maurice 
as follows : — 

“ Dear Bryan — when you read this, I shall be gone. 
Take charge of these papers, pay my bills, and see that 
Luigi has a handsome present. You will find my purse in 
the lid of my trunk. If more is needed, apply to my uncle, 
Thomas S. Goodstowe, care of Goodstowe and Coles, New 
York. If there is any left, give it to the Poor-Box of the 
English Chapel. I am too tired to write. Rememb — Colis 
— our talk” 

The writing of these last words ran into a shapeless scrawl, 
and only the fragments here indicated were legible. A spot 
of blood on the margin told the story. The packet contained 
also the key of Frank’s trunk and a few memoranda. One 
of these was as follows : “ My will is in the hands of I. 
Davis, attorney. New York, 35 Nassau Street.” There was 
a pocket-diary, some miscellaneous papers, and a folded copy 
of verses. These last Maurice put away unread. 

38 


BRYAN MAURICE OK THE SEEKER. 


39 


While Maurice was thus engaged, Gardiner had sum- 
moned the landlord and sent a servant for the English 
chaplain. The landlord was assured that all expenses should 
be met, and directed to send for a proper undertaker ; all of 
which he seemed to understand, and then as the chaplain 
did not come, they sent for the doctor who had attended 
Frank. He luckily was aware what steps were necessary, 
and gave a few concise, clear directions, to which Gardiner 
listened attentively. Maurice took possession of Frank’s 
trunk, and had it removed to his own room. He took 
Frank’s Prayer-Book from the table, and placed it in his 
pocket, and then sat down to watch by the body. Luigi 
placed the little table by the head of the bed, with the 
lighted candles upon it. “The master,” he said, “was a 
good Christian. Your English priests are not like our 
priests, but that was good.” Presently Gardiner signed to 
him as they went out together. 

It v as a long and weary watch for Maurice. Christmas 
day faded into night. The undertaker came, the sexton of 
the English chapel, grave, quiet, and respectful. The body 
was shrouded and placed in a coffin, and then silence once 
more. Maurice was face to face with the great mystery of 
death. It was the first time in his young life. Before the 
coffin came, it had still been Frank his friend who was 
there, but now the change was fully realized to him, when 
the face and form were shut out from sight. Awe came 
upon him, something like disquiet at the last. He turned 
over the pages of the Prayer-Book listlessly, unable to fix 
his attention upon anything. At length Gardiner reap- 
peared. “ Will you see the English chaplain, sir?” he said 
to Maurice. “I am told he is below.” Luigi followed, 
with two of the undertaker’s men, who came to watch, and 
Maurice was glad to go out of that sad room. In the salon 
below they found a florid and rather portly gentleman in a 
rather ultra-clerical dress. “The Rev. Stephen Gardiner?” 
said he, inquiringly, as they entered. 

“ That is my name,” said the American clergyman. “ I 
am an American clergyman, a Presbyter of the diocese of 
New York. We sent for you, — this is Mr. Maurice, a 
countryman of mine, and the intimate friend of the dead, 

' — to ask concerning the funeral.” 

“ Eh ! really, now, I’m very sorry, but I’m hardly at 


40 


VAlYJ^y MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


leisure to attend to it, — it must be, you know, at night, and 
the Protestant ground is so shockingly far off. I’m not at 
all well, and Lord Ellesdean is quite ill ; and I’m in con- 
stant attendance on him. You know I’m not the regular 

man here, only taking the cure while W is away. Now 

you ’re in orders, I think you said, I dessay you wouldn’t 
at all mind taking the duty.” 

“I expect to,” said Gardiner, quietly. “I desired to see 
you in order to know what steps were necessary to obtain 
permission from the goveniment.” 

“Oh! aye, really I can’t say. You’ve a consul, or an 
ambassador, or something of the sort here. I’ve sent you 
our sexton, who will do the thing very properly. Did your 
young friend send for me in his illness?” 

“Yes, but you were not in,” said Gardiner; “the case 
was urgent, — a sudden bleeding of the lungs, — and I was 
at hand and gave him, at his desire, the Sacrament. I 
presume you would hardly, under the circumstances, con- 
sider it a trespass on your cure, as Mr. Goodstowe was a 
member of the American Church.” 

“ Oh, no, no, by no means ; you’re in the city, you know, 
in the Bishop of Rome’s diocese, and you must settle that 
with him. By the by, I never, you know, do that thing. 
Outside the walls I’m not in the diocese of Rome, but in 
that of Ponte Milvio ; and as I cannot find my diocesan, I 
venture to act, d’ye see, taking it for granted that, as I am 
in the practice of the rites of the Church Catholic, he would 
approve.” 

“ I must say, I admire your distinction,” said the Ameri- 
can ; “ as my conscience does not trouble me about the 
Bishop of Rome’s limits, I shall ofiiciate to my own country- 
men where they need me.” 

“But, my dear Sir,” said the chaplain, “that is schismatic, 
very schismatic, positive dissent.” 

“Well, it may be dissent, but as I cannot worship with 
the Bishop of Rome, I certainly do not mean to go without 
worship; and while he denies me the Sacrament in its ful- 
ness, I shall receive it when I can get it unmutilated.” 

“Now, I really can’t agree with you there; there’s a vast 
deal to be said on the other side. Of course if there is a 
Real Presence, and I fancy you won’t deny that, it ought to 
be altogether in all parts of the Sacramental elements 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


41 


alike. We can’t divide it, you know, and why not then 
find it in one as in both?” 

“It is not a question of argument,” said Gardiner, “but 
of autliority. What our blessed Lord commanded to be 
done, Rome shall not forbid me to do. But as I have your 
permission to officiate to-morrow, I will do so, and I’m 
much obliged to you for calling.” 

“ Oh, not at all, not at all, I am engaged to-night at a 
petit souper at the Hotel de Russie, in the Piazza di Spagna, 
and called in on my way. I fancy you had better see your 
ambassador to-morrow, or Prince Torlonia, — he will arrange 
it for you. Good-night!” and he was gone. 

“I have done that,” said Gardiner to Maurice; “I called 

on Mr. C , our Charge. I know some of his father’s 

friends well, and he will attend to-morrow.” 

“How very kind you are,” said Maurice; “I never 
even thought of these things.” 

“No! I knew you could not be expected to, and I would 
not put it upon you ; but you look pale ; you have fasted 
quite long enough ; go and get something at once, or you 
will be ill.” 

Maurice did indeed feel the want of food. It was long 
past the hour of the table-d'hote. He went listlessly out 
into the night, and crossed the square to the restaurant of 
the Hotel de I’Europe, where he had once dined with Frank. 
He ordered his meal and sat moodily down to it. A party 
of young Americans came in, chatting aloud in the fresh 
spirits of youth. They took the next table, and though 
his back was toward them, he could not help hearing their 
talk. 

“See here. Bob,” said one of the party, a young man 
with a dark moustache and “garotte” collar, “why can’t 
you go with us to Tivoli next Sunday?” 

“Don’t ask him,” broke in another; “he’s engaged as 
primo tenore at the American Chapel.” 

“What! has the fair Emily hooked him in so far as that? 
She’s snatching a brand from the burning, especially from 
such rips as you and me, Tom.” 

“Why do you call him a brand? because he’s a stick, 
and a black one at that?” 

“ There, boys, that’ll do ; you can’t sing and so can’t shine. 
It i^ays. let me tell you, for we have to rehearse all the 


42 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


weiik, and between finding the places and whispering about 
it in church-time, and all that, I get through the long 
prayer nicely, and when the sermon comes I pull out a 
novel. Then, after knocking about with you fellows all the 
week, it does a man good to go to church.” 

“ So I should think,” said the first speaker, “ especially 
the novel part. How does Miss E like that?” 

“Oh, she don’t care.” 

“ Don’t she care? I rather think she does. I heard her 
tell you it was shameful.” 

“ Well, I can’t help that. I’ve religion enough to last half 
an hour; but by the time we’ve done singing, mine sort of 
gives out. The sermon is a bore anyhow, and I told her so 
the other day. Says I to her, ‘If I do the pious half the 
time, you ought to let me off from the other half.’ ” 

“Well,” said a third, “ give me the original old Church 
for my money. There you have it seasoned to taste, much 
or little, hot and strong, or iced and mild, just as you 
happen to want it. There was that High Mass to-day in 
St. Peter’s, three mortal hours long ; and yesterday morning 
I went in to the Military Mass in the Trinita del Mont6, 
where the nuns sing superbly, by the way, and I saw the 
French officers come in. The scamps were just eight 
minutes at it, no longer than our morning prayers at Old 
Harvard, and a precious sight more entertaining.” 

A thin, bilious-looking Englishman, at the next table to 
Maurice, crossed himself on hearing this irreverent speech. 

“ For my part,” said another, who had not spoken before, 
“ I go to the English Chapel, when I do go. There’s some 
splendid women go there, and they say it’s a first-rate open- 
ing into English society, especially if you are up to the 
High-Church game. There’s a young parson I met the 
other day, out of whom I am getting all the new dodges. 
Besides, it’s the only respectable Church at home, and a 
fellow must go to church there once a Sunday.” 

“ By thunder, I won’t stand that,” said the singer ; “ I’d 
like to know if the Dutch Reformed isn’t as good society as 
anything Episcopal. And when I play Catholic, I’ll have 
the real article, and no sham mosaic.” 

Just then a new-comer entered, and came up to their 
table. 

“ Boj^s,” said he, “ I’ve just left the consul’s. There’s a 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


43 


young American died to-day at the Angleterre. F 

says we must all turn out and go to the funeral.” 

“Who is it?” 

“ Where is he from ?” 

“Yes, we ought, that’s a fact; we must stand by the 
country.” 

“ I don’t know,” replied the other ; “ I have forgotten the 
name, that is” — 

Maurice rose and turned toward the group. “ My class- 
mate, Frank Goodstowe, of the class of at Harvard, 

died to-day of consumption. He was,” and here his voice 
faltered, “ my — my — very dear friend.” 

There was first a hush, and then expressions of sympathy 
and inquiries, and proffers of kindness, from all the good- 
humored, thoughtless young fellows. One had met him. 
Others knew of him, and in a confused but hearty way each 
tried to know something of his illness, and how best to 
show their good-will. 

Cards were exchanged, and promises to be present given. 

Maurice felt himself drawn, in spite of himself, by the 
tie of the mother-land, nearer to these gay young men. 

The next evening he met them at the hotel. All were 
there, in decorous black and with quiet demeanor, showing 
real reverence where they could be touched with a reality. 
The American Minister and Consul came with their house- 
holds, and some few other Americans. The little proces- 
sion moved quietly through the dusk to the Protestant 
burial-ground, that spot where so many bright hopes have 
been quenched. Far away from the inhabited part of the 
city, beside the Porta San Paolo, where the pyramid of 
Cains Cestius looks down upon the graves of Shelly and 
Keats is the little cemetery. Gardiner stood at the en- 
trance as they alighted. The young Americans took up 
the coffin as bearers, and Maurice followed as chief mourner, 
with Luigi. Mrs. Gardiner and Miss He Forrest followed 
with the American Minister. Two torch-bearers stood be- 
side the open grave, as Gardiner, holding his Prayer-Book, 
but not even glancing at it, began the beautiful burial- 
service. The light streamed mildly upon the old walls of 
Rome, and the heavy masses of the stone-pines and 
cypresses caught the flickering radiance. The group were 
silent and deeply impressed ; and when Gardiner, having 


44 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


pronounced the solemn sentence of commitment, began, 
“ I heard a voice from heaven,” Maurice glanced involun- 
tarily upward, as if to catch an answering echo from on 
high. The words sank deep into his heart, and when in 
low murmurs some around him joined in the Lord’s Prayer, 
he too, though afraid to let a sound pass his lips, joined 
mentally therein with his whole heart. 

When he reached the hotel again he found the American 
party lingering to bid him good-night. There was a little 
constraint about them, as not knowing exactly what to do 
or say ; but one of them stayed behind the rest a moment 
and said, — “You will find us at Nazari’s, at breakfast, 
every morning at nine. When you feel like it, join us, for 
you must be lonely.” 


CHAPTER V. 


I T was not the next morning nor the one after that Maurice 
availed himself of the invitation. He preferred the 
quiet of the hotel and to steal off to the Coliseum where he 
spent many hours, lounging with a book upon the ruined 
seats, musing over many things, trying to shape his plans 
of life according to the glimpses he had gained of a new 
light. He would have joined Gardiner’s party at dinner, 
but it was increased by one or two English clergymen, Ox- 
ford men, and with them ladies. The talk was all of New- 
man, and Gladstone, and Mr. Ward, and the Bishop of 
Exeter, and the Gorham case, which was pure Sanscrit to 
the young New Englander. So after a week’s solitary 
sight-seeing, one morning, instead of breakfasting at the 
hotel, he strolled round into the near Piazza di Spagna to 
Nazari’s, and according to promise, found in one of the 
dingy inner rooms his new acquaintances. He wanted 
company, — distraction, — he was barely twenty-three; he 
had come abroad to see all that was to be seen. So he first 
faintly declined, and then accepted an invitation to join in 
one of their excursions. Rome has them for many days, 
and ever new. It is now the Vatican, then the Barberini 
palace, then the Corsini, then Pamphili-Doria, or the foun- 
tain of Egeria, or the Baths of Caracalla, or to mount to 
the ball of St. Peter’s, or to lie on one’s back and study the 
Aurora of Guido upon the ceiling of the Rospigliosi, or to 
go to see the Gladiator dying at the Capitol, or to pass the 
day in modern studios, or to visit Overbeck in the grim old 
Cenci palace by the Ghetto, — we are tired of cataloguing 
before we are half through. Rome cannot wear out. The 
writer of this history, if he could put his head into Fortuna- 
tus’s wishing-cap, would unhesitatingly exclaim to be young 
again and endlessly wintering in Rome. 


45 


46 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


So, to return, Maurice went with the party, it is no mat- 
ter where, but to some one of these, and dined with them 
at the Europa afterwards, and agreed to make one in an 
expedition to see the Vatican Gallery of Sculpture by 
torchlight. The start was to be at the Hotel de Kussie, 
where were ladies to meet, Americans all, and Maurice was 
presented and made at home, as it used to be in the gooa 
old times before it mattered from what part of the land a 
man came, so he only swore by the Stars and Stripes. He 
found himself paired off with a fair Bostonian, whom the 
others fought shy of as a “blue.” By the time they 
reached the gallery, Maurice and she had got through with 
that preliminary fire of desultory talk by which we ascer- 
tain one another’s position before opening in earnest. He 
was rather pleased at finding himself not mated with one 
of the chatty little New York belles, of whose smiles his' 
friends were so emulous. So he hit off rather dashingly one 
or two of the Harvard celebrities, and on her side the look 
of polite sufferance was exchanged for one of decided atten- 
tion. Thus it happened that she accepted his arm at the 
entrance of that long corridor which introduces us to the 
greater treasury beyond. By torchlight views there is no 
lingering over the inscriptions and rude intaglios from the 
early Christian tombs which line the walls of the corridor. 
We go only to see the chief gems of the collection. As 
they paced together up the long hall, Maurice, who had 
seen just this first portion and no more, was inclined to talk 
about them, and especially to air his new-made discovery of 
an early Christian church existing in Rome. The lady 
listened politely, but evidently had no sympathy with art 
so archaic and unclassical as the rude crosses and palms 
from the tombs of Rome’s serfs and outlaws, princes though 
they might be in the kingdom which is eternal. However, 
all discussion of this ceased as the torch-bearers stopped 
before the magnificent head of the young Augustus, that 
superb sculptural prophecy of the first Napoleon. The 
show began here, and Maurice, who had read Arnold, and 
was rather well up in his Roman history, regained his lost 
ground by the spirit of his criticism upon the founder of 
Roman Imperialism. 

The effect of torchlight upon the Vatican sculpture is in- 
deed marvellous. The marble seems to swell and heave in 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


47 


the tremulous rays. Especially as they gazed upon the 
Laocoon, the serpents appeared to be actually gliding 
around the smooth limbs of the boys, and the rugged fea- 
tures of Neptune’s priest seemed to tighten with the spasm 
of a living agony. One of the ladies uttered a halt-sup- 
pressed cry of terror, and Maurice felt the hand upon his 
arm tremble. They ended with the Apollo Cabinet. The 
fair Laura, Maurice’s companion, was in ecstasies. She was 
in her element. She showed a critical knowledge of 
anatomy that was startling in its correctness. She quoted 
Miss Fuller and Emerson, and then advanced an opinion 
that such nobility of art could only be attained again when 
culture should have opened the wider fields of Grecian life 
once more to us. “To the pure all things are pure, to the 
refined all things are ideal. We need to break away from 
sinful compliances with the absurd legend of a fall of 
humanity, the fiible of priesthood. The beautiful is the 
true and the pure. The Greeks were as noble as we are, 
and their art did not shrink from its legitimate results.” 
The young men around were listening. Maurice felt his 
cheek grow hot as he caught the expression upon one or two 
of their faces, but the young pythoness of art did not notice 
it. 

“ No,” she continued, “ we do not hide the ideal of form 
in the brute, why then in man ? AVhen the true religion, 
which is the worship of nature, is perfected, we shall be 
able to have faith in humanity.” 

Happily the torches were lowered at the close of the 
regulation ten minutes, and the lecture came to a pause. 
Maurice felt at liberty after that to study a little more 
closely nature in the face of this new hierophant of its 
creed. 

Laura Sedley was undoubtedly beautiful. She had 
clear-cut features, with dark eyes, which look straight and 
unshrinkingly at you ; a fine mouth, with rather thin lips, 
and with black hair brushed back from a very intellectual 
forehead. There was a thorough aplomb in her manner 
which made her seem quite matronly to the young man, 
but there was nothing in it of self-consciousness, no appeal- 
ing softness of word or look. She was simply expressing 
certain well-pondered decisions in a pure philosophical 
way. 


48 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


“ Oh,” said she, as they left the cabinet, “ I could have 
worshipped Apollo.” 

“ Can’t you now ?” said Maurice. 

“What! the deification of the sun, a simple planetary 
unit amid the myriad millions of the Via Lactea?” 

“Well, fair Hypatia” (Kingsley’s book was just out anc 
everybody reading and talking about it), “ can you not 
idealize ?” 

“ Please don’t call me Hypatia, I have no patience with 
the woman, she was no true philosopher ; how could she be 
with the absurd science of her day? She cared for the 
worn-out prettinesses of old paganism, just as some of my 
schoolmates, girls who belong to St. Polycarp’s Church in 
Boston, do about their High Church playthings. It is all 
very pretty, like little girls sitting with their dollies, play- 
ing tea-party. For my part, I always wanted to cut my 
dolls open, to see what they were stuffed with ; — no, give 
me science and art.” 

“ But arj; must have art’s inspiration.” 

“ That is nonsense, you must have art-knowledge. Zeuxis 
flung his sponge at the dog’s head on his canvas and made 
the foam flecking its mouth ; and so what calls itself inspi- 
ration dashes at its work, hit or miss, and now and then 
makes a success. What of it ? It does not gain a real in- 
duction. Inspiration, genius, are but the silly w’orld’s 
synonymes for luck, in its gambling ventures upon the 
great Rouge-et-Noir table where Nature keeps the bank. 

We know that your rule of chances is reducible to the 
perfect mathematic.” 

“Who are ‘we’?” said Maurice. 

“We Compteists, disciples of the Philosophie Positive.” 

“Then you cannot worship Apollo, because you can 
make another as good as the Belvidere.” 

“ Certainly, if it were worth while, with time and pains 
enough. The Apollo is constructible, but man prefers to 
make something else.” 

“ Miss Sedley,” said Maurice, taking her hand and hold- 
ing it up to the light of the moonbeam (they were now 
crossing the court-yard of the Vatican) — “Miss Sedley, 
your diamond is simply a crystal of charcoal ; or carbon,*! 
suppose I ought to say ; make me a hatful of diamonds and 
I will think of becoming a convert to Positivism.” 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


49 


She withdrew her hand from his and also dropped it 
from his arm, with a slight maidenly gesture of offended' 
dignity. 

She is less positive than sh.e professes, thought the young 
man, having rightly interpreted her movement. 

“Pardon me, Miss Sedley,” said he, “I forgot I was talk- 
ing to a lady, and used a freedom only allowable toward a 
brother philosopher.” 

“Oh, you young men,” she replied, “Pendennises all, 
sneering at everything and doing nought.” 

“Well, what does the Philosophy of Positivism bid us 
do? All knowledge is the same, except for the distinction 
of motive. We push our investigation into the arcana of 
wines and dinners, which are equally alluring with chemistry 
and botany.” 

“Do not trifle, Mr. Maurice,” said she impatiently, “you 

have some brains ; you are not like R and F here, 

mere sticks and dawdles, — I see you can reason.” 

“I am sadly in earnest. Miss Sedley,” said he, flashing 
up into the remembrance of what was most upon his mind, 
“I am sincerely waiting to be taught, and I am sure that 
one question lies at the root of all teaching, ‘What am I 
here for?’ Rome would gladly answer that question for 
me, I see, if I will only shut my eyes and put my hand 
into hers. She has a key, she says, to the mystery of the 
future life, but I am not yet ready for self-surrender. I 
am eclectic enough, goodness knows, but one must have a 
motive.” 

“ Love of science for science’s sake.” 

“Please distinguish — What is science? what right has 
knowledge in any branch to arrogate to itself that title, if 
all lead to nothing? As Emerson says, ‘what do I know 
about rats, or the private life of lizards in the wall?’ I can 
go out and study that all day here upon the aqueducts. 
Why not as well to study the stars? Suppose I exhaust 
all knowledge, becoming the last man and heir of the 
Ages ; when I gain the ultimate fact, what shall it profit 
me?” 

“Do you mean, ‘what shall it profit you if you gain the 
whole world and lose your own soul?’ Don’t inflict that 
horror upon me. I became a Compteist as much to get 
away from that stuff as for any other reason.” 

5 


60 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


“No, I did not mean it, though as I am not yet converted 
to Positivism, there may be something in that ; I meant 
just what I said.” 

She paused. Her former .question had been but fencing 
to gain time. Maurice was looking deeper into these 
questions than she had ever done. Faith was wakening in 
his soul, while on hers was resting the satisfied slumber of 
skepticism. She only half liked this disturbing process. 

“Ah,” she said, “wait till the ultimate fact be found; 
you will have enough to do before that. Meanwhile, here 
is your problem, sir ; take the work of Compte and Buckle; 
give us the new religion. With the perfect knowledge will 
come the perfect happiness. Ignorance and sin are the 
same. Bid we know how to live and be happy forever, we 
should live and be happy forever. AVhen you do this you 
will be the Prophet of the New Religion. We will worship 
you. Tu Magnus Apollo eris!” 

“But, my dear lady, do you not know that the more 
knowledge increases, on the more points it touches the un- 
known? If ignorance and sin are the same, the more we 
know the more we are likely to sin, for aught I see, — at 
any rate to be unhappy. I can’t wait for this ultimate fact 
to be gained.” “However,” added he, “to be Apollo is a 
temptation. Do me the favor provisionally to. burn a little 
incense to me, and hang a garland on my head now. I 
will take the hecatomb when my work is done. Apollo is 
lazy, also bred in New England, and likes to get earnest of 
his wages before he undertakes the job. And now, fair 
Dian, since you will not let me call you Hypatia, here is 
your carriage. Permit me to hand you in. I am going to 
commence my studies forthwith by an examination of the 
laws of combustion, as Sheldon here is doing.” She hardly 
bade him good-night, she was so provoked at the turn of 
persiflage with which he had ended his talk. Bryan passed 
his arm into that of Sheldon, the young man who, on the 
night of their first meeting, was in favor of having the 
genuine old Church, and no shams, if one must have a 
Church. Laura Sedley threw herself back in the carriage, 
and refused to join in the rattle of the others, but kept 
repeating to herself over and over the words,— “ultimate 
fact.” They were a terrible stumbling-block. Hers had 
been the ideal side of Positivism — she had not before seen 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


61 


its Epicurean aspect. Of course it shocked her, but sha 
could not drive it away. 

To the readers of this story who live, or rather belong 
west of the Hudson River, these young people may seem a 
very exaggerated caricature. To the Eastern portion of the 
critics no apology or explanation is due. There is but one 
Boston, and Harvard is its university. 

Meanwhile Bryan was sauntering with his companion 
across the magnificent piazza. Unobserved by them, the 
same Englishman who had crossed himself in the cafe of 
the Hotel d’Europe at the silly speech of one of these 
young Americans, came- out of a side-door in the Vatican 
and followed them. The young men stopped beside one of 
the fountains to look at St. Peter’s. The Englishman fol- 
lowed, and watched them from behind. 

“Mr. Maurice,” said Sheldon, “I’ve been thinking over 
this Catholic matter. I like it. I joke about it with the 
fellows here, but there’s more in it than just fancy. I have 
been studying these monuments up here in the gallery. 
There was a Church here in St. Paul’s time, — there has 
been ever since. They have been going straight along from 
the start. Some things they have added, no doubt, but 
they can’t have changed them so much, you know. Why 
are they not as near right as our folks at home with their 
great square meeting-houses and all preach, preach, preach? 
Now this St. Peter’s is something like what we read about in 
the Bible — Solomon’s Temple and all that. At any rate, 
if a fellow is to have any religion, as I suppose a fellow 
must, this is thorough-going. I like going to confession and 
getting pardoned off. A man leads a wild racketing kind of a 
life here, — he don’t mean any harm by it, but he can’t very 
well help it, or pull up short if he wants to. When one 
has been spreeing it rather hard and got sick, then to whiff 
round and experience religion and turn Methodist, because 
he is played out, seems to me spooney. It’s like a horse 
when he can’t win the race turning jackass and dragging a 
sand-cart. But then one hates to think of slipping oflf the 
hooks after a wild time with Belmont and Tom King, and 
those boys. The safest way, I think, is to hedge on religion, 
even if you bet large on the good time generally. You can 
do that ill the Old Church. She says. Pay as you go. 


62 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


While in our shop it’s just run up — no end of a tick, and 
then have the bill come in when you least expect it.” 

Maurice was rather confounded by this patent Roman 
cement for broken resolutions. Amused, too, by its frank- 
ness, but he could not answer it. Was it not just coarsely 
stating what he was secretly longing for? He, too, wanted 
a religion which would bear softly on the pleasures of the 
world. He wanted a creed which was not followed by any 
decalogue. So he could not answer Sheldon, but stood 
there looking at the moonbeam in the fountain basin, and 
sucking at his cigar as if to draw from it a smoky solution. 
He remembered Frank sleeping under the cypresses there 
away, and wondered if he had experienced religion because 
he found himself consumptive. It did not sit badly on 
Frank at any rate. He gave a sigh and turned to go. 
Just then a voice close by made both of them start. 

“I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but did either of you 
drop a letter?” it said. They looked round and the sallow 
Englishman stood beside them. Sheldon felt in his pockets. 
The letter was lying at Maurice’s feet, but on the other 
side from the speaker. Maurice took it up. To his surprise 
it bore his name. He opened it. It contained only a line, 
— “You seek truth and peace. Be to-morrow at noon, at 
the Church of the Gesu.” 

“This is certainly for me,” said Maurice, “but how came 
it here? Did you ?” 

“Oh no, by no means. I was just crossing the square 
and saw it lying on the ground. I recognized your friend 
for an American, and so I ventured to speak, which I 
should hardly have done with one of my own countrymen ; 
but I have been in the States and learned how to be polite 
at the expense of reserve.” Maurice thanked him, and 
then the stranger added, “Will you direct me to the Piazza 
di Spagna. I am a stranger in Rome, only came two days 
ago from Civita Vecchia, and have not learned my way.” 

“Oh, certainly,” said Sheldon. “Come with us — w^e are 
going there — take a cigar?” 

^ “Thank you — I don’t mind,” said he, taking it, but not 
lighting it. Maurice turned to give another look at St. 
Peter’s. 

“Say w’hat you please,” he broke out, “it is the grandest 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


53 


temple in Christendom, — not but what I like the Gothic 
cathedrals better — but this is so grand.” 

“I say,” said the Englishman, “you both are Protes- 
tants I suppose — all Americans are. Now I’m an English 
Catholic. I dare say you wouldn’t mind telling one how 
this sort of thing you see here strikes you. I’d like much 
an intelligent Protestant’s impressions. In England there 
is so much party-spirit in us all that you can’t get a civiller 
word than scarlet woman of Babylon from them — but in 
America you are more liberal. I’m told your Lord High 
Chancellor, or Chief Justice of the President’s Bench — or 
something of the sort, is a Catholic — in fact the President 
himself might be — mightn’t he?” 

“Yes,” said Maurice, “I believe you’re right. Judge 
Taney is a Roman Catholic.” 

“ Well, then, come, tell us how this strikes you. I can’t 
say I exactly like it. Of course, I must stick by Old Mo- 
ther Church, but at home it is very different. There we 
Catholics are the old gentry — old Stuart men. We look 
down upon those upstarts who got rich when Henry plun- 
dered the monasteries, and the fellows who had army 
contracts under the Georges — we, who can trace back to 
the Conquest, and find our names in the Doomsday-Book. 
I can tell you we’re not all priests and beggars, as they are 
here. A priest is a priest, of course; but unless he’s a 
gentleman and comes of a good family, you keep him at a 
distance, except just for his duties, and he knows his place. 
But here it is just My Lord, and hats off to every Irish 
vagabond out of Maynooth. Then there’s so much stuff to 
believe. Of course I like a picture over the high altar in 
my church. So do some of your Protestants — the sensible 
ones I mean — but I can’t stand its winking at me. It won’t 
do — that sort of thing gives Exeter Hall a terrible pull 
over us. Now say out what you think ; you won’t offend 
me. If I’m right, I ought not to care, and if I’m wrong, 
why it’s only fair to tell me so. Honestly, now, don’t you 
think it overdone ?” 

“No,” said Maurice, “not if it is sincere.” 

“Oh, well, you know, but how can it be? Anything in 
reason ; but if I am to be crossing myself this way every 
time I come to one of these, (he suited the action to the 
word as they came beneath a lamp burning before a shrine 


54 BRVAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 

with the Madonna and Child at a street corner,) I sliall be 
tired enougli before I get home. Not that I like to see a 
man stop and light his cigar at these, as I saw one of your 
countrymen try to do at Malta. No more would you.” 

“Frankly,” said Maurice, “ I would like to believe it all 
— one must believe something. It is so comfortable to 
believe.” 

“There’s just where I wonder at you. I was born to it, 
and I should as soon think of denying that I’m a Lanca- 
shire man as my religion, or selling the old place at home, 
that came into our family in Edward IV.’s time. It is a 
point of honor to take it all — the hard and the easy — but if 
I were quit of it, as you are, I would look twice before I 
leaped. I’m born a subject of her Gracious Majesty, but if 
I were not, do you think I would emigrate from America to 
England ?” 

. The contrast between the off-hand manner and bluff 
good nature of the speaker and his appearance was very 
striking. Thin, with rigid features, close-cut attire of deep 
black, quite like an English dissenting minister, he talked 
like a hearty, broad-shouldered English squire. 

“ No,” he continued, “ I don’t want to make proselytes, or 
to see any made ; and when I see young fellows like you, 
whom all this show and pomp will strike, looking toward 
the Old Church, I like to give you a fair warning. When 
you’re in, you’ll stay in. Our people have a knack of 
keeping fast hold upon their converts, and wFen you have 
once given up to a priest, you’re like a well-broke colt — 
you like the stable best. We find belief come easy, we are 
trained to it; but you can keep a doubting and asking 
questions, and trying to find something to suit you. I dare 
say it’s very nice, or so many of you wouldn’t do it. And 
then there’s this thing: our Church is always open, when a 
man does want rest, and authority, and all that — and we let 
in a man at the last moment.” 

The young men were silent. No panegyric of Romanism 
wmuld have had half the power of this seeming dissuasive. 
There is no idea to an American with so much of hidden 
fascination in it as that of belonging to the Old World. 
Here was a man without prejudices apparently, who saw 
the faults of his own Church, yet stuck to it. 

“ See here,” said Sheldon, “ I have a mind to know some- 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


55 


thing more about your Church, and I wish I had some good 
fellow, who don’t care, as you say, about converting me, to 
tell me about it — to give me a fair chance to know what is 
what. Dine with me to-morrow at the Europa, and we’ll 
have a quiet talk — at six — if that suits you?” 

“Well, I’m game,” said the Englishman, and he gave 
Sheldon his card. “ Ah,” said he, “ here we are at the 
Piazza di Spagna. Many thanks for your kindness, gen- 
tlemen !” and he turned and left them. They walked back 
toward the Angleterre where Maurice was to stop — but had 
they watched they might have seen their late companion, 
after pausing a second to make sure that he was not 
watched, pass on with a swift steady step to the gate of the 
Propaganda, summon the porter by the bell, and respond 
as he went in to the deep reverence of that official by a 
brief authoritative gesture of benediction. 


CHAPTER VI. 


T he next morning Bryan remembered his mysterious 
letter and the appointment it contained. He looked at 
it again. It bore, as was said, only the words, “You seek 
truth and peace. Be to-morrow at noon at the Church of 
the G4su.” But at the end, and in ink of a fainter hue, as 
if written in some sort of sympathetic fluid, which had come 
out from time or warmth, was this reference: “St.John, 
chap. i. V. 48.” Maurice caught up his Bible and looked 
out the text. It startled him exceedingly. He fixed upon 
first one and then another of two or three circumstances as 
the one alluded to, but could not determine, and, as it 
proved, was quite astray in all. He breakfasted at the 
hotel, hoping to meet Gardiner, but did not ; then went to 
the Pamphili-Doria Palace, to see that famous gallery of 
pictures. Still he kept nervously looking at his watch, 
and full ten minutes before the time he stood upon the steps 
of the Gesu. Once within the lofty church, he wandered 
round it with the shy, loitering step which we Americans 
generally assume in foreign places of worship; neither 
wholly recognizing nor wholly ignoring the sacred character 
of the place. Your genuine English Protestant would, if 
permitted, climb the high altar itself, Murray in hand, to 
see a famous picture ; while the \vorshippers come in, kneel, 
and rise up again in a thorough business-like and wholly 
at-home way. He found himself at length in front of the 
main altar, looking up at the huge globe of laph lazuli 
above the Baldachino. A flock of little Jesuits, led by two 
large ones, came in, went dowm on their knees simultane- 
ously, and jumped up again and went their way. Maurice 
was reminded of a flock of crows lighting, as he had often 
seen them on the salt marshes of his home. He was about 
to follow them away, the half-ludicrous idea having fallen 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


57 


like a damper on the excited mood with which he had come 
to the church, when a tall gray-haired man, with a lofty 
and striking face, and clad in a long black cassock, having 
a dark purple cape above it, stood beside him. 

“ You are welcome. Sir,” he said in English ; “ I felt sure 
you would come. Pray step this way, where w’e may con- 
verse without disturbance to others.” 

He led the way to the sacristy, where he seated himself 
in a confessional, pointing Maurice however to a seat in 
front of him. Then he was silent. Maurice felt embar- 
rassment gaining upon him, and, to relieve it, broke the 
silence, just as the other expected that he would do. 

“ You sent for me to come here to-day. Why ?” 

“ Because of the reason why you, thus sent for, came. 
Another would have taken no heed of it.” 

“ But how did you know that reason ? I hardly know 
of it myself.” 

“ The patient does not question the physician as to how 
he knows him to be ill, he asks for the remedy.” 

“ Can you give me a remedy ?” 

“ I can.” 

“Let it be so; but first prove yourself to be the phy- 
sician.” 

“You are an American, and take nothing and yet all 
things for granted. We can afford to be indulgent. Do 
you remember the little church at Stertzing, in the 
Tyrol 

Maurice started. He did remember it; and that then 
was the key to the mysterious allusion of the text in the 
letter. He had strolled into it while his horses w^ere resting, 
and while his mind, deeply moved with the spells which 
Romanism weaves in that land — the most perilous of all to 
a Protestant of doubtful faith — was in a most unsettled 
state. He had found the church empty, though open, had 
crossed himself from the benitoir, and then knelt before 
the little altar, looking, not upon its tawdriness, but above 
it to the rude and painful figure upon the cross, and had 
prayed aloud for light and guidance. Of course, as a 
young New-England Unitarian, no thought of adoration 
to the figure, since not even one of worship to the Being 
whom it presented passed his mind, but he had done so 
with a vague longing to enter into the simple religious 


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spirit of the mountaineers, whose faith and nobleness of life 
he had so learned to admire and love. He had met the 
cure coming to the church as he left it, and had half re- 
solved to turn back and question him, but shame-facedness 
withheld him. He felt sure that no one else could have 
witnessed his act; in fact, with that true New England 
mixture of caution and enthusiasm, he had examined the 
little church closely, to be certain of his solitude, as soon 
as he rose from his knees. 

“Yes, hither, I do remember,” said Maurice; “but you? 
were you there?” 

“I never have been north of Milan, my son. I have not 
been outside of Rome for three years. Can you not believe 
that your prayer was heard?” 

For one moment Maurice was ready to say yes. The 
perfect self-possession of the ecclesiastic showed him that 
this was not a chance knowledge adroitly used, but that far 
more was known to him than he chose to reveal. A faint 
smile played about his firm, handsome mouth, marking a 
full conviction of power. 

“Nay, more, my son ; you fancied, did you not, that my 
letter, for it was mine, referred to what you did at Bologna 
a fortnight since, or to what you did six days ago here in 
Rome?” 

Maurice was now fairly bewildered. That leaning toward 
the marvellous we all have, for a second or tw’O fairly mas- 
tered him, and then the old native shrewdness came back 
to his aid. It was all a trick, he thought, clever, inexplicable, 
but still a trick. Before he could speak, however, the 
priest, reading all the inward movements of the mind in 
his face, according to the wonderful skill of his order, 
said, — 

“Pardon me! Do not think that I hold this to give me 
any claim upon your attention. Such a plot as you suspect 
might do for a dull or a shallow brain. I may not tell you 
how I know these things, that is, or rather is not, my secret, 
but I am aware that you must see there is a natural expla- 
nation simple enough to one who has the key. We do not 
need to work false miracles to win souls. The mighty 
mother only desires to prove her love. Does it show no 
care, no tenderness that you have been so sought for? The 
eye which saw your involuntary homage, knew that you 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


59 


were no child of the Church. At the first intimation on 
your part that you were seeking the fold, yearning love 
goes out to meet you. Cum mitem adhuc longe esset, vidit 
ilium pater ipskis et misericordia motus est, et occurrens ceci- 
dit super colhim ejus et osculatus est eum. That love, you 
see, has never lost sight of you, but has watched and led 
you here. How many hours after that prayer of yours, 
think you, was it that the Mass was offered on yonder altar 
for your conversion? Not generally as for any heretic, but 
for you.” 

Maurice was really moved. The artful appeal to his 
feelings put his reason to sleep. 

• “Yet, father,” said he, “what would you have me do?” 

“Accept that thou seekest, my son.” 

“Tell me first, for that is my chiefest trouble, what that 
is.” And ere the priest could reply, Maurice went on: 
“Do not ask me to seek to save my soul; that I cannot 
stand. You all, Protestants and Catholics, alike are harp- 
ing upon that — a spiritual selfishness that leads us to look 
out for number one. You each profess to represent the 
only genuine insurance company for heaven. And your 
only object is to get us to pay you the premium instead of 
to your rivals.” 

“My son, look around you and ask yourself what the 
Catholic Church has to gain by a single convert. Nonne 
dimittit nonaginta novem in deserto et vadit ad illam, quce 
perierat donee inveniat earn f I do not ask you to care for 
saving your soul. You may find some day that your soul 
is of value; but that is our not your motive. It is that 
you come back to the mother’s bosom, the mother whose 
love and care I have been proving. Come and prove your 
love by service, not such service as the so-called churches 
of the world exact, which gold and silver measure, but such 
as they know not of^ — prayers for quick and dead, adoration 
for her beatified servants, whom she delights to have hon- 
ored; meditations, such as true affection delights in, upon 
her glorious career as the spotless Bride. Yes, my son, like 
the true mother in the wise judgment of Solomon, she 
would rather have you hers thus in spirit, though another 
possessed your body and the title of mother, than divide 
with any the dead possession. Continue, if you will. Pro- 


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testant in name, in acts of outward membership, but give 
to the Church your soul’s affection, your real allegiance.” 

The appeal was made with consummate skill. Its lofty 
tone touched the heart of one very keen to detect the first 
symptoms of selfishness, and who had been repelled from 
all religion by the manifest faults and sectarianism of the 
religious. The father added, after a moment’s silence, — 

“Go, my son; you now know why you have been sought. 
The grace of God in your own heart can alone make it 
effectual. If you want me, ask here for Father Francesco, 
the American priest. If you should be ill, night or day, I 
will come to you ; send this card [giving him one] to this 
church, by any Italian.” 

Maurice rose to go. 

“Can you not,” he said, “give me something to read upon 
the matter? I am very ignorant.” 

“Certainly; here is a list of works, and an order to admit 
you to the library of the Propaganda, prepared in expecta- 
tion of this interview. You see we know your w’ants, and 
have the best robe and the ring of gold ready. We shall 
yet kill for you the fatted calf” 

They left the sacristy. Maurice held out his hand in 
farewell. The priest did not take it, but laid his own gently 
on Maurice’s shoulder. 

“ Have you forgotten,” he said, while a sad sweet smile 
came over his face, “have you forgotten what is better than 
books?” ^ 

He pointed to the rail of the altar. The church was 
empty of worshippers, as it was the hour of noon, when the 
Roman churches are generally closed. Maurice knelt 
there, unable at first, for tears, to command his thoughts; 
then he prayed long and fervently. When he rose the 
priest stood over him in the act of benediction. Maurice 
left the church silently, a watchful and quiet acolyte open- 
ing for him a wicket-door in the great portal. As he looked 
back he saw the priest bowed to the pavement in absorbed 
devotion, and felt in his heart that the father was praying 
for him. 

Maurice spent the next week much in the Propaganda 
library. In one thing, however, his mentor had failed. He 
had not suspected the depth of ignorance of Christian his- 
tory, and of the leading doctrines of the faith under which 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


61 


the neophyte really labored. Many of the ablest argu- 
ments glanced off from him harmless, like sharp icicles 
from the tortoise’s shell. He was bewildered, as by a gor- 
geous vision of the great Church in the early centuries, but he 
could not seize the vital point of her life in the Christian veri- 
ties. So a cold fit followed the fever, and it occurred to him 
with characteristic Yankee caution, to apply not to the Jesuit 
father, but to Gardiner, for an explanation of what these 
dim phantoms meant. His thorough Unitarianism saved 
him from the really strong point of Home’s appeal — her 
guardianship of the orthodoxy of the creeds, — as his Puri- 
tanism prevented him from appreciating the fact of her 
unbroken orders. So he thought he would take his per- 
plexities to the Anglican minister. If his solution confirmed 
his own half-formed impressions, (as he had always been 
told that Episcopalianism was half way to Rome,) it would 
be the testimony of a hostile witness, and therefore to be 
trusted; if it did not, why the matter was where it was 
before. 

So he waited his opportunity and caught the clergyman 
one evening after the five o’clock table d’ hole. He rushed 
at once into the subject. “Mr. Gardiner, may I ask you a 
question about religion, — about the Church?” 

“ Certainly, any number. Come up to my room and we 
will take our leisure; just let me get a cigar and take one 
for yourself, and then we shall talk freely.” 

As they took their places, Maurice standing before the 
fire-place, and the clergyman comfortably stretched out in 
a large arm-chair, Maurice began, — 

“ Why do you say that when a good man dies, he goes 
straight to heaven, when the Scripture says he does not ?” 

“ What does the Scripture say?” said Gardiner. 

“Hodie in Paradise cum me eris,” said Maurice, uncon- 
sciously quoting from the Vulgate. He had fired a pre- 
pared mine from one of the books of Romish controversy, 
dug with wondrous pains against Protestantism, as understood 
by Jesuit writers of the third class. 

“ We don’t say that any man goes straight to heaven, 
though your new friends, the Romanists, say that the beatified 
saints do. We say that the dead enter the intermediate 
state, there to await the last judgment, when soul and body 
are reunited.” Maurice colored at the allusion to his “ne\v 


6 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


friends.” “You have been dipping, I see, into the Romish 
controversy, and that shot came out of a familiar arsenal of 
the enemy ; you perceive it did not hit me at all. Had I 
been an ultra-Protestant, it might have, and I should have 
been forced to declaim against Purgatory to cover my 
retreat. As it is, I can fall back upon St. Paul, and bid 
you read over the Burial Service. Did the Father tell you, 
or did any of the books he bid you read tell you that the 
English version was full of errors, and so that you had 
better go to the original Latin ?” 

“ Something of the sort.” 

“ He might have intimated that St. Luke wrote in Greek, 
if he had been really anxious you should go to the fountain- 
head. Who is your spiritual director ? N , or F , 

or W ?” 

“ How do you know I have a spiritual director ?” 

“ Oh, that is plain enough. Did he present himself to 
you in some startling way, or did you go to him of your 
own accord ?” 

Maurice told the whole story, which, of course, we need 
not repeat, nor Gardiner’s few but well-put questions, which 
brought out the whole thing into plain relief before Bryan’s 
mind. When the account was ended, Gardiner paused a 
moment, thoughtfully — 

“ I think I have it,” he said, at last. “ Was it intimated 
to you that you could dispense with an open profession, only 
giving your secret allegiance to the Church ?” 

Maurice started. “ Why, yes,” said he. “ I did not look 
at it in that light, but something of the sort was certainly 
said.” 

“ No, of course you did not, but that was the way of it. 
They try that on New-England men. They are not anxious 
to get avowed conversions, the shrewder sort. The vulgar 
Irish priests like to make a great hurrah over a proselyte 
from a good family, but the wiser heads know that at home 
an open secession ends a man’s true influence in New- 
England. They want to set a secret leaven at work — in 
Colleges and among the leading circles. But I think I 
know how you were got hold of You were in the Tyrol in 
September last, you say. A Boston lady, who was then on 
her road, spiritually as well as corporeally, to Rome, came 
by that route from Vienna — has been here ever sincc^ and 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


63 


has become a zealous disciple. She must have seen you 
there, and being in the same state of mind as yourself, read 
at a glance all that was working in your thoughts. Slie 
has told the Father of it. She knew you were a Harvard 
Unitarian when you left home, for she was then one herself. 
I think, from what you have before told me of our friends 
in Boston, that she knows you personally, at least by sight. 
Your name and all that she could tell of you were entered 
upon the books of the Propaganda. When you reached 
here, your arrival, like that of every other traveller, was 
notified to them by the passport officials. They have your 
pasport, and by the vises could trace your route. You say 
you met an English gentleman at Bologna ; went with him 
to the Campo Santo, and afterwards called with him at a 
convent to see a young friend of his there. He was a papal 
agent, not on the watch for you, but for any fish floundering 
in the sea of doubt. He learned your name and sent in his 
report — all in the line of his work — to head-quarters, where 
it was filed with the rest. They are wonderfully systematic 
here in Borne. The Boman incident you speak of I have 
no clue to, but it was in some similar way known. Mother 
Church had never troubled her loving heart about you till 
she found you ready to her hand ; then the affair was 

reckoned up and placed in the hands of Father W , a 

deserter from our own communion, whom I knew well, and 
he, I suspect, planned it. The letter so adroitly dropped by 

B , an English Jesuit, who has hopes of one of the new 

bishoprics they are plotting in England — I know him too — 
was very like one of Father W ’s devices.” 

Maurice sat still; he had taken his place on the sofa 
quite disenchanted. “ What had I best do ?” he said doubt- 
fully. 

“ You had best make up your mind what you want to do. 
I am sure I would not have you turn Papist, and indeed I 
don’t much fear it, but you had better even do that than 
continue unbelieving. You have first to consider whether 
you can be a religious man. <What you are thus far trying, 
is to escape being a Christian by becoming a Boman 
Catholic. When you have determined on being a Chris- 
tian. I think 1 can, by God’s grace, help you to become so ; 
))Ut you must first realize the fact of the need of salvation. 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


I don’t mean from tlie consequences, but from the fad of 
sin — the sin itself” 

“ What is sin ?” said Maurice. 

“ My dear young friend, that is a question you must ask 
and answer of yourself Holy Scripture can teach you, and 
prayer. Do the will and you shall know of the doctrine.” 

“ I will certainly think of the matter,” said Maurice, 
“but I cannot go on in this way with the priest any 
longer.” 

“No, certainly not; of course not.” 

“ But something I must do.” 

“ AVell, do this. You want in the first place to find, at 
least in your present state, somewhere to go for guidance.” 

“ Yes, that is it. But I can’t accept the Bible, much 
less study it, as you say, unless I know what to think of it. 
I want its true place in history. Rome here has professed 
to give me that, but by putting it altogether to one side. 
She offers me a Church autocratic, not inspired, but of itself 
infallible. Now history will not let me believe that. My 
New-England teachers offered me a Bible infallible, but yet 
I was to get its meaning according to my own lights 
Parker and the rest have told me that it has a meaning all 
hidden under a cloud of mistakes — that there is a grain of 
wheat buried under heaps of chaff*. I think I should like 
a Church with the Bible in its hand — for somehow I have 
come to see that there is a Church somewhere, and I cannot 
feel that the Bible is just an ordinary book.” 

“That is precisely the right position,” said the clergy- 
man. “You want a body of men organized in a common 
faith, allegiance to a person, to be the fit recipients of a 
revelation committed to enduring records. That body are 
the founders of a society which shall keep and transmit 
those records — the two indissolubly bound together as the 
Nation and the Constitution. Their association must of 
necessity be, not from accident of choice but from ordina- 
tion. The body exists organic and entire before the record 
is made. St. Matthew and St. John were made Apostles 
of the Lord before a line of their gospels was written. 
Now this society must be continuous or it loses its hold 
upon the revelation.” 

“ There I differ,” said Maurice, now roused in argument. 
“ We have the Greek writers, Homer, Plato, Demosthene.s, 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


65 


^c., but we are not Greeks, nor has the Greek Common- 
wealth survived.” 

“ No, but the human race has, and we are men. But 
that is not the point. AYe are not seeking the fact of the 
preservation of the Scripture revelation, but its authority. 
Those writers you spoke of stand on their own merits, and 
for them their existence is enough. The Bible, to be an 
authority, requires a continuous witness. Its merits — and 
here is your New-England fallacy in failing to see that you 
receive it unknowingly upon the witness of the Cliurcli 
Catholic which you ignore — depend, you say, upon your 
spirit of receiving it. On the contrary, your impressions 
of it are the consentient warrant of your reception of it 
primarily upon authority. You were shown as a child, 
little by little, that it was best to do as your parents ordered 
you, but that showing was not the ground of your obedience. 
That lay deeper still. You did not first convince your 
reason of the evidences of parental care, before receiving it, 
but receiving that care because ordained of God, you Avere 
strengthened to value it, by the proofs of love which it made 
manifest to you.” 

“ I see, sir,” said Maurice, after a pause. 

“ It is then necessary to find that society.” 

“ AYhere is it?” 

“In the Church Catholic. You have taken one step — 
having found it not to be in the Catholic Church, so-called, 
which is Papal and not Catholic.” 

“Yet,” said Bryan, “she has continuity!” 

“Yes, but as you say, sue puts out of her hand the Bible, 
the charter, which should be, if she were true, her chiefest 
treasure. My dear young friend, here, for the time being, 
is your part, study that out ; read, when you can get them, 
the writings of the Anglo-Catholic reformers. I will give 
you a note to the very man in Oxford who can help you, 
and meanwhile try to live a sober, righteous, and godly 
life. When the Church is found, you will find the key to 
the Bible, and then I hope and pray you will find that it 
tells you of a Saviour. Now I must say good-night. It is 
past eleven, and I have much to do to-morrow. Only do 
not make up your mind rashly, and when we both return to 
America, write me, and we shall meet again. I will see 
you when you like here ; but I can plainly discover that 


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your mind and soul will both need more discipline ere the 
right hour come.’^ 

Maurice left the room feeling much lightened in heart, 
but as Gardiner had supposed, not convinced, and ready to 
relapse into his dreamy poco-curantism. He little knew 
that ere he slept the good priest had prayed long and fer- 
vently for him, nor how gladly, in spite of his seeming 
coolness, his heart had burned within him as they talked. 
But Gardiner knew well the depths of the New-England 
pride of reason; and though the way he had suggested may 
seem to some of the readers of these sketches a way not 
according to the gospel pattern, he was nevertheless right. 
The young man had great possessions of the intellect, and 
until he could bring them to the market, resolved to sell all 
that he had, he would never follow the Master whose steps 
lead to the cross. And the surest way to bring this about 
w^as to suffer him to test their practical value for himself. 
“We speak what we do know.” The ordinary processes of 
“awakening” do not commonly turn the New-England 
mind. It must shift its whole plane of spiritual and intel- 
lectual being ere it can put on the white robe of true and 
loving discipleship. 


CHAPTER VII. 

B ryan left off his visits to the Propaganda. The conver- 
sation with Gardiner had opened his eyes somewhat, and 
though he had but little opportunity for the reading Gar- 
diner had marked out for him, he contrived' to work out 
one or two propositions in his mind which were of use to 
him. The apparent sincerity of the Romanists had at first 
attracted him, and, therefore, the first glimpse below the 
veil had equally turned him back. One thing he saw: 
Gardiner was just as much, in his own idea, the priest of the 
one Church as any foreign ecclesiastic, and was as thoroughly 
in earnest, with the additional merit of being frank and 
honest. He w^as dimly arriving at a sense of the claims of 
the Church, rather by way of feeling than of argument, but, 
therefore, so much the more effectively. His contrast had 
hitherto been entirely between the shifting, contending ways 
of popular Protestantism, and the firm self-conviction of 
Rome. He liked neither, but wanted something which both 
seemed to promise him in part. The thought of a position 
which should combine the freedom from superstition of one 
with the reverence of the other, pleased him. The diffi- 
culty was in knowing where to find it, and New-Englander 
as he was, his first idea was, of course, to try and construct 
it for himself. Gardiner might have helped him, but the 
Gardiners were just then leaving Rome for the south of 
Italy, and busy with hurried sight-seeing. So he drifted 
back into the American set. They were a good-natured, 
but awfully reckless, somewhat dissipated, lot of young 
fellows, rich but ill-cultivated, full of momentary enthu- 
siasms, but very partial to champagne in the most absurd 
places, and with very little of moral principle toward the 
other sex. Tliey had two creeds about woman, — one toward 
tijeir own countryv’omen, and another much worse toward 

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all foreigners. Maurice contrived to keep only to the 
former, and hence Avas thrown very much with the young 
ladies of their acquaintance — a lively, dressy set, who, while 
violating all the covenances of continental propriety, were 
perfectly modest and right-minded girls — according to their 
teaching. Miss Grant, the “Emily” of the chapel-choir, 
soon contrived to draw him into a travelling flirtation. She 
had tired of her lazy tenor admirer, who in his turn had 
tired of using his flue voice in hymn tunes, and becoming 
aware that Maurice was a Harvard Unitarian, she seemed 
inclined to change her missionary sphere from the conversion 
of a gay young New Yorker, to the setting at rest the 
heresies of a quiet Bostonian. She knew about as much of 
the one work as of the other, but she fancied herself, at 
first, greatly successful, and, moreover, she was not half as 
much scandalized. Bryan was ready enough to talk on 
religious matters with her ; and, moreover, being all afloat 
himself, he was scrupulous about unsettling the faith of 
another. He was morbidly alive to the question of a reli- 
gion. I think one gets so in Borne, from the ceaseless 
presence of the sights and sounds of worship, and the 
under-current of a great historic tradition continually 
drawing you in. 

There are pagan altars before which men once knelt in 
awful sincerity — these are the tokens of the days of the 
martyrs. One may laugh at the head of St. Peter im- 
pressed upon the wall of the Mamertine prison ; but if you 
believe that Jugurtha was really let down into its chill 
darkness, you cannot help feeling that St. Peter might have 
trodden the same sad depths. So as Miss Grant had not very 
great confidence in her theological powers, she was soon 
driven to the Orthodox American formula of trying to 
coax her neophyte to go to church with her. To her sur- 
prise Maurice assented. He even seemed glad to be asked 
— a new phase in her experience of young men whose coats 
and boots were of the world, worldly. 

The American chapel at Borne was then a funny com- 
pound. One week it was Presbyterian, the next New 
School Taylorite, the third Dutch Beformed. There was a 
little bit of liturgy for sucli Low Church Episcopalians as 
were shocked at the flowers of the English chapel in the 
Old Granary outside the walls; a peppery dash of Calvin- 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


69 


ism for the conservative Orthodoxy of New York; a slant 
now and then toward the laxer beliefs of Boston ; and once, 
from the unexpected failure of a preacher, a real bit of 
Quaker meeting, an half-hour’s silence, at which next day 
everybody laughed, excepting a Philadelphia family who 
were really of the faith of Fox and Barclay. Strange men 
who had missions to convert the Pope, came and went; 
young licentiates in theology aired their maiden sermons, 
and Doctors in Divinity put forth their rounded periods. 
Maurice went steadily for three Sundays. He came away 
from the last impressed with the feeling that it was a mere 
makeshift. He said as much to the fair Emily that even- 
ing, in reply to her enthusiasm over the morning sermon. 

“ It was all very well, Miss Grant,” said he; “but that 
sermon of his is flat contradiction to the hymns you sang 
before and after it, and the prayers were to both. We had 
Methodist singing, Baptist praying, and a sermon that was 
neither.” 

“But don’t you like to see different denominations meet- 
ing on the common ground of the Christian faith?” 

“No; not when they don’t meet, and their ground isn’t 
common. You and I sang, that ‘The voice of free grace 
cries escape to the mountain ;’ and then the Doctor prayed 
that the elect might be speedily brought to a sense of the 
truth; and then Mr. Adams told us that we had only to idll 
to be converted, by calculating the advantages of the step, 
and we should be converted. Somebody must have been 
WTong.” 

“ But all believe in the Saviour,” said she, “ and that is 
the essential.” 

“All disagree in that, it seems to me,” said Maurice. 
“ The fact is, I have consulted both these gentlemen, as 
well as given an evening’s study to the hymn-book. Adams 
tells me that I must believe three and one to be the same 
thing. I tried to work round it; but no, he tells me that 
is just Unitarianism in disguise. The hymn-book says, 
Christ died for all, and the Doctor says. He did not die for 
infants or the non-elect. The Doctor also says, I must be 
immersed — he is strong in that — by a regularl]^ immersed 
minister; but he will not admit that any Catholic can be a 
Christian, though the Baptistery at Florence would hold 
half his congregation, and is deep enough to drown in. 


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Now, if I’m elected I can’t see that immersion will go for 
much, and if I’m not I am sure it won’t.” 

“You are beyond my depth,” she replied, shaking her 
long curls; “but I’m sure that as Americans we ought to 
go to the Church where pure Christianity is preached, and 
be true to the faith of our Fathers in a strange land.” 

Maurice laughed, as he took his hat to go. “ The ‘ faith 
of our Fathers’ seems to me a very uncertain faith ; but if 
being born in Yankee-1 and makes one all right, I am tole- 
rably safe in that. Flowever, in spite of the risk, next 
Sunday I am going ‘ outside the walls.’ ” 

He did so, and was shown into a back seat with liveried 
footmen and buttoned pages. Fie could not follow the ser- 
vice in his American Prayer-Book, and was utterly bewil- 
dered at a sermon upon the duty of Confession and Friday 
fasting. His New-Englandisrn took fire; and the Sunday 
following he looked for a moment into a church where 
Mass was going on, and then strolled out on the Campagna 
and worshipped nature with the help of a pocket Shelley 
and a cigar. 

Worse followed. As he was lingering home through the 
dusk in a rather dissatisfied mood, there dashed by him an 
open carriage filled with his young American friends. 
They pulled up suddenly, a few yards beyond him, and 
looking back beckoned to him. He came up and was 
greeted with a chorus of gay voices — 

“ We’ve been to Frascati ; had a jolly good time. Come 
and dine with us, and go to the Opera to-night.” 

“ There’s no Opera, you heathen, to-night.” 

“Yes there is, and the best of the lot — always is, Sun- 
days, you know.” 

“ No, there isn’t.” 

“Bet you what you like. Jump in, Maurice — squeeze 
in anyhow,” and Bryan found himself half hustled, in the 
big-schoolboy fashion of our young countrymen, into a 
place — three on a seat, in a wide ramshackle vehicle ; and 
so up the ancient Appian pavement and over the smoother 
streets of modern Rome they rattled, to the door of the 
Lepre. 

Maurice had never seen that famous dining-place of the 
artist brotherhood. He found it a little repulsive: the 
smoky cavernous rooms, the odd waiters, the queer dishes, 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


71 


the funny polyglot conversation, and free-and-easy ways, all 
jarred on his fastidious taste. But his appetite was sharp- 
ened by his long ramble, and the Orvieto good, and he, 
having been lonely all day, disposed to be companionable. 
The boys were very polite to him ; they had a notion that 
he was rather a superior fellow, and deferred to his ideas 
on art and his authority on classic subjects. He had been 
already a year in Europe, leisurely seeing and studying, 
while they had only come out in the fall, and spent six 
weeks in Paris, as well as plenty of money, and then posted 
as fast as possible to Rome for the winter. They were a 
clannish, light-minded, superficial set, but brimful of good- 
nature, and very ambitious to be gentlemanly. 

“ By Jove, fellows, this is a new way of spending Sunday 
night,” said one. “ Three months ago I was reading good 
little Sabbath-school books and the ‘ Christian Visitor’ at 
home, just as regularly as the week came round, unless I 
could get leave to go to prayer-meeting. Ho you know I 
had some thoughts of going to Princeton — only the governor 
said he couldn’t afford it.” 

“ Couldn’t afford it ! Mac, what in time do you mean ? 
Princeton’s cheap enough — cheap and nasty, I think.” 

“ No, no ; — you don’t take. ‘ Look here, Fred,’ said the 
paternal to me when I proposed it — ‘ you’ll lose three years’ 
studying. Then you’ll come out of the seminary and want 
to marry right off, and have to go hunting for a parish. 
You’re lucky if you get one up country with four hundred 
a year. You marry, and your wife brings an olive-branch 
with every two years — parsons’ wives always do. I shall 
have to support you, at least, to the tune of a thousand a 
year ; and then when you break down with bronchitis, you 
and your tribe wall be coming to live on me. The great 
city churches are above your mark, and they don’t go a- 
begging ; besides, they are no such great things after all. 
No, no ; I can give you six months or a year’s run abroad ; 
then you come home and settle down to business ; then I 
can do something for you, and by the time you’d have been 
trying on your first white choker, you may be independent 
of me. Then marry well and I shall be clear of you, and 
can look after the rest.’ ” 

“Sensible man the Pater; what did the ma’am say?” 

“ Oh she liked the Princeton dodge, and thinks I’d have 


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made a great preacher^ but she has hopes of my next 
]>rother Sam, or little Arty.” 

“AVell I’m bound to try the law,” said another. “You 
can live at home then as long as you’re in an office, and if 
you don’t get practice, go West. But, fellows, how about 
Sunday? Oughtn’t we to be keeping a little quieter to-day? 
I don’t like picking it out for a regular spreeing time; a 
fellow might stay at home and write his letters, or go to 
chapel.” 

“Oh, bother chapel. What’s the good of chapel here? 
When a man settles at home that’s different; but for my 
part I always find myself thinking of all sorts of things at 
chapel, especially during the long prayei’s, either about the 
girls I have been training round with, or else I fancy the 
ceiling a billiard-table, and go to trying shots all over it. 
Last Sunday I was so sure of one that the moment church 
was out I went and had a try at it on Pietro’s table in the 
Corso. So I concluded ray chapel-going didn’t amount to 
much.” 

“I’ll tell you what J used to think of during sermon-time 
in the old meeting-house at home,” broke in another. 
“Very much like that, only more so. I used to fancy 
getting all the glass chimneys of the lamps and setting them 
up at the end of the aisle and bowling at them with the 
shades. They were round as balls you know, just globes of 
cut-glass. If I could have got in on the sly the day before 
I left home, I would have done it, sqre.” 

Maurice laughed at the odd idea. The speaker, how- 
ever, went on. “That is what church-going comes to with 
most of us young fellows. We have nothing to do, and it 
don’t interest us, and we can’t help thinking. I don’t see 
the use. Two of my best friends experienced religion in 
the great revival, and for six weeks they never let me alone 
about joining with them. In six months one of them was 
on his way to Calcutta before the mast, for having got his 
fingers too far into his boss’s safe ; and the other married a 
girl in a hurry, and if he don’t drink now, it is because he 
can’t find a bar to run his face at in ten miles round. It 
was a pity, too, for better and steadier fellows than they were 
before I never saw ; but just being so set up with the idea of 
being all right, seemed to make them lose all head.” 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


73 


“ But,” said Maurice, “that was not the case with all who 
were converted then?” 

“No, it did some of them a devilish deal of good. Some 
of the hardest cases stuck to it, and are all right now. Ned 
Holmes and Sara Goodwin, my friends, you see never had 
been in anything wrong before, but this it was did for them. 
They had got through-tickets to glory, and so,” added he 
with a laugh, “ they stopped at the first station to take a 
drink and the cars left them.” 

“ But,” said Maurice, “ was not the trouble that they 
had the wrong motive, — this ‘going to glory,’ as you call 
it? 


“I don’t see -what other, except to keep out of scrapes. 
If a man cannot keep from lying and stealing . and getting 
beastly drunk unless he joined the Church, he had better 
join; but if he can, what’s thause of being tied up so that 
you can’t play a quiet game of whist, or smoke a cigar, or 
be in the same room with a glass of wine, or dance, or go 
to the theatre? Because you can’t swim it’s hard that I 
mustn’t go in bathing. There’s the humbug of it. If you’re 
a Church-member, all these things are sinful; if you’re 
not, nobody thinks the worse of you, if you only behave.” 

“ Look here, Harry, you’re all wrong,” said one who had 
not spoken before, — a dark-faced, black-haired young man, 
with a slight sneer always playing round his mouth, and a 
sensual fullness of the lower jaw. “/hope to be a religious 
man. If I’m not, I know what will become of me.” And 
he pointed with his forefinger emphatically downwards to 
the floor. “I shall be one if I am to be, when my time 
comes. I sha’n’t be before that for all my trying. Until I 
am I can’t make things worse nor better, and so I have my 
good time Avhile I can.” 

“But Mr. Jones,” said Maurice, “you don’t mean to say 
that you may break all the commandments as often as you 
like, and then repent and be clear of the whole afterwards?” 

“Yes I do ; keeping them will make no difference if I’m 
not effectually called, and if I am then what has happened 
before will make no difference. If God means to save me 
out of hell He can do it without me, and if He don’t I can’t 
make Him. Meanwhile I have an engagement with a 
friend wlio don’t like to be kept waiting,” and with a satyr- 
like leer he rose to go, his handsome face looking positively 


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Ugly for a moment. He bent down and whispered some- 
thing in the ear of his neighbor, and was gone. The debate 
had been free enough till he spoke, — earnest, but rather 
laughingly carried on, — but tliis last had fallen like a wet 
blanket on them all. There was a moment’s silence, and 
then one said in a low tone, “Left you again to set” 

“ Hush !” said the other ; “ never mind.” 

“But I do mind, and I’ll go halves with you, for it is a 
downright swindle. I move we cut Jones. He’s the worst 
man I know in Rome, and if he is going to be mean with 
the bills, then, hang him, let him slide.” 

“ So I say. Anyhow, that’s queer doctrine of his, that 
we are all bound for brimstone and no help for it. If Jones 
is to be ‘called,’ as he calls it, I’m not so sure that I had n’t 
rather stay out in the cold. Fancy having to live forever 
with such a fellow ! Not much heaven in that.” 

“ See here, fellows, don’t let’s have that sort of talk. I 
don’t believe him, you know; but there is something in 
what he says, only he has it all put wrong end foremost. 
We had all best keep decent now, and when the time does 
come for any of us, we sha’n’t have so much lee-way to 
fetch up. I can’t answer his way of putting it ; but I know 
this, — I may slip off the jib-boom end of a dark night at 
sea, and I don’t want to have a rascally life to reckon up 
just when I’m trying to keep afloat. I know some things 
won’t hurt any of us to do, but this Sunday spreeing is not 
one of them, and I don’t go again. Come, boys, let’s be off*.” 

They rose from the table. Maurice slipped his arm into 
that of the last speaker. “ Come up to my room and have 
a quiet talk.” 

The rest went off* for the Opera, considering that as they 
had made a day of it, it was just as well to finish it, but 
resolving all to do better a week hence. 

I dare say some of my readers will be scandalized by this 
free talk. I cannot help it. The scandal is in the thing 
itself, not in the describing it. It will do some of us no 
hurt to know what young men really think and feel, and 
how they express themselves when with one another. I 
should like to write a proper tale about proper characters. 
But when a man starts to find religious knowledge, by the 
cross country route, he will meet with many who are not 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


75 


proper characters, as in fact, generally, if he keep his eyes 
open and live in the vorld like a man. 

I am describing young men as they are, — at least, as a 
great many of them are, and if the description is not an 
attractive one, it concerns somebody to try and make things 
better. Much as I detest Rome’s way of dealing with her 
laity, one thing we might learn from her, that it is worth 
while to know the facts in respect of those we are trying to 
convert into Christian men and women. The confessional 
is not needed for that, but common sense and moral fear- 
lessness are. As long as young men laugh at us for good, 
solemn, but utterly unsophisticated book-worms, we shall 
not influence them much. The patient must feel that the 
physician understands his case before he will be submissive 
to the treatment. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


W HEN they reached Maurice’s chamber the conversation 
was at first upon indifferent topics. Then a brief 
pause ensued, and Bryan said, looking up suddenly, “Mr. 
Stewart, you are not a member of any church, yet you seem 
to have religious ideas. I want to know what you think? 
I am afraid of all these people who are committed ; they 
are working for their own sects, and just repeat what they 
ha’fe been taught in childhood. I can read their catechisms, 
and all that, when I want to, without taking things at 
second hand. But you, — ^you think, and I want to know 
what you make of that fellow Jones’ talk. I confess I can- 
not answer it, and never could, only I don’t believe it any 
the more. You may put it any way you please; but how 
is one to reconcile one’s free-will with the infinite power and 
knowledge of the Creator? If the doctrine of the atone- 
ment is true, why doesn’t the other thing follow? There’s 
my rub, you see.” 

“Well, now, Mr. Maurice,” said Stewart, setting his 
elbows on the table, and pushing back, with both hands, the 
thick black curls from his forehead, “I’ll tell you what I 
think of the whole thing. I’ve been to sea since I was 
eleven years old, and a man must think a good deal when 
he is keeping the middle w^atch of a quiet night in the 
trades. Now, if you won’t be shocked at my way of put- 
ting things, — a sailor’s rough way, — I wdll tell you what I 
think of it. I have pretty much worked out the thing in 
my own way, wdth the help of my Bible. God sends the 
winds to blow as he will, but He doesn’t hinder us from 
sailing on whatever voyage we set out. He sends the 
storms, too; and when a man is caught jammed in between 
the Isle o’ Man, and the Welsh coast under his lee, in a 
North-Channel hurricane, no arm but His can save him. 


b:iyan maueice oe the seekee. 


77 


For all that, it don’t do for one to go out of port with a 
short-handed crew, and sprung spars, and rotten rigging, 
and a leak under your forefoot. Now, He has given His 
orders, and the first thing a man learns at sea is, ‘Obey 
orders if you break owners.’ ” 

“That I see plainly enough,” said Maurice, “but how 
about the atonement?” 

“Well, I don’t mean to speak about that irreverently, or 
make comparisons which shouldn’t be made; but it seems 
to me as if our part in it was something like this: Suppose 
the crew of a man-of-war mutiny and go below just as the 
ship comes under fire. The captain, after calling on all 
hands to do their duty, goes to the wheel himself, and with 
his own hands steers the ship by the batteries,, but he him- 
self is hit and mortally wounded. Now, if government 
was to say to that crew, ‘You, every one of you, deserve to 
be hung at the yard-arm, but your captain has begged that 
you be let off for his sake. You shall be forgiven if you 
will try to be true and brave men, — true to the death.’ It 
does seem to me, that if anything would make good and 
true men out of a set of mutinous rascals, it would be such 
a piece of good news given to them as they stood with the ' 
ropes round their necks. And just suppose the captain in 
some way come to life again, and ready to lead them once 
more, if they would only follow him.” 

“You think, then,” — said Maurice, who had followed out 
this sailor rhetoric as best he might, rather hazily, — “you 
think that the moral effect and example of the Lord’s death 
is the principle of the atonement?” 

“Moral example? — No! I tell you that the men who 
have skulked their duty and deserve to be strung up and 
know it, are pardoned ; pardoned for the sake of one who 
has done his duty, and who is rightful master of them all, 
and has a perfect right to say they ought to be served so. 
It isn’t a merit of their own if they do their duty after 
that; it is the least they can do; and if they don’t, they 
deserve to be hanged, and that with a new Manilla rope, 
and a whole starboard watch to sway aloft on it. Still,” he 
continued, “there is a bit of a puzzle here that I was a long 
time in making out. And what came to help me was after 
I got into the Navy and heard the Articles of War read. 
They read, you know, after each offence, ‘You shall sufier 


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BliYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


death, or such other punishment as a court-martial shall in- 
flict.’ When I first heard that, as a middy, it struck me 
as fearfully hard. But after a couple of cruises I knew 
better. I found out then what disobedience of orders might 
bring. When you send a crew to quarters in port, or are 
exercising them at making sail, and all that, and the order 
is given, ‘Let go the foretop-bowline,’ for instance, and the 
man isn’t at his station, it may be only a rope parted, or 
the work put wrong. But when you’re ranging alongside 
an enemy’s frigate, and because one man skulks his duty, 
and, for want of doing the right thing just at the right 
moment, your ship misses stays and is raked, fifty stout 
fellows’ souls may be logged against that one skulker’s 
account. Man-o’-war life is an easy life when every one 
does his duty, but you see a powder-monkey’s carelessness 
may blov/ up a line-o’-battle ship; and so you see a man’s 
duty isn’t measured by just the way it looks to him. But, 
on the other hand, if a man does his best, any reasonable 
set of officers know how to make allowances for mistakes, 
and they like and favor a man who pulls with a will, and 
tries to be true to the country and the flag. I said to my- 
self many a time, the Articles, bloody as they seem, are 
only meant for those who deserve all they get. The service 
isn’t a machine, where, if you put your hand in the wrong 
place, your arm is torn off at the shoulder, whether it is 
accident or mistake or foolhardiness, all alike. It is meant 
for reasonable beings, and a man’s motives and good-will are 
taken account of.” 

“I can’t say I quite get your idea,” said Maurice. “What 
about being justified by faith? The clergyman I saw lately 
talked a great deal about the necessity of that, and said 
that all one’s works were nothing at all, and worse than 
nothing.” 

“ Well, just you read what St. Paul says. He is a man 
that all sailors love, if for nothing else than for that voyage 
of his. I’ve been in a Levanter, off* Cape Spartivento, and 
I know that any one who could keep a cool head and a 
brave heart there, and, what is better, give them to all the 
rest, especially with a lot of soldiers aboard — to my think- 
ing the worst sort of passengers, because, you see, they are 
accustomed to take nobody’s orders but their own officers’ — ■ 
was not a man to be set down for a know-nothing. St. 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


79 


Paul gave me a deal of comfort ; for it seemed to me that 
his idea of faith was just the sailor^s idea of trust in his 
captain — keep to your duty, and let it blow high or blow 
low. And his notion of a man’s duty seems to me our 
sailor’s notion — that a man must have his wits about him, 
not waiting for orders for every little thing, like one of 
those sentries who can’t answer a civil question, or do any- 
thing but just be drilled. You see, on shipboard, we get 
our general orders ; but a man must know how to do his 
work, and learn it, and have an eye to windward. When 
I’m sent to the wheel, the officer of the deck gives me my 
course by compass, but he isn’t at my elbow all the time, 
telling me just when to put the helm up and put it down. 
I know I’ve got to keep the sails full, and meet her when 
she comes up, and not let her fall off. It’s intelligent ser- 
vice that is expected of me. A prime seaman who is always 
ready to obey all orders, without a question, uses his head, 
for all that, quite as much as any landsman can do.” 

“ I see,” said Maurice, “ what you mean, and I like it, 
too. Your idea of the pardoned mutineer is not a bad one. 
To such a man pardon is good news ; and that, by the way, 
is what Gospel-evangel really means, though I never thought 
it. But there is another point I want cleared up. I sup- 
pose, on your own showing, you would have to accept the 
pardon by taking service again. If a Christian means a 
pardoned mutineer, he has to speak out and promise to be 
loyal and obedient, before he can show it by his conduct.” 

“ That is so, sure enough, and I mean to do it the first 
chance I get.” 

“Well, here is my trouble,” said the other, “I don’t 
know how and where I ought to do it.” 

“As for that, I can only give you my sailor notions,” 
said Stewart. “ I say, whenever I see the old flag flying, 
and that is the Cross, I go aboard and report myself to the 
commanding-officer. I have my choice, and if I can find 
an Episcopal chaplain, I shall go to him. You see that 
suits us, sailors; it is more ship-shape. We like to have 
our officers under rules, as well as we are, and not left to 
their own heads. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings ; but 
this chapel here, at Rome, is a sort of fore-and-aft concern, 
like a mackerel-schooner bound for the Banks, the skipper, 
mayhap cook last voyage, and foremast-hand the next. If 


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those rich churches on shore only knew how much good 
they could do the sailors, they would take Jiiore pains about 
it. A Prayer-Book is a thing any captain may carry, and 
read the service. It suits old-country emigrants; and 
many’s the time, in the Liverpool trade, when they’re sick 
and down-hearted, that a bit of it will put life into them. 
One can carry the short prayers out of it in his head ; and 
on a wild night aloft it’s a comfort to have them to say 
over, when you have too much to do to be making up 
prayers, and thinking what you ought to be saying. We’ve 
a name for everything, and a place for everything aboard- 
ship. I wish I had a Prayer-Book now.” 

Maurice remembered that he had two — Frank’s, and the 
one Mr. Gardiner had given him. He hesitated a minute, 
and then said, “ I can spare you one, the gift of a friend, 
however ; and I must ask you, when you get where you can 
buy another, to return it to me.” 

Stewart took the little book, thanking Maurice, and rose 
to go. “ Good-bye,” said he. “My leave will be up next 
week, and I must be back in Liverpool. I’ve a fourth 
mate’s berth in one of the American steamers, and I hope 
we’ll make the trip together. Good-night,” — and he was 
gone. 

This conversation was not without its effect. Of course 
the young sailor’s idea of the Atonement, and of faith, is 
not presented as a scientific statement of the truth. No 
one but himself is to be held answerable for it ; and if it is 
not orthodox, no cavil must be taken at it. This is a story, 
not a treatise on doctrine. Its object is to show the history 
of a mind’s progress, and all things true or false which help 
therein are part of it. 

Consequently it will not be improper to turn to a very 
different scene. One of Borne’s annual events is Prince 
Torlonia’s ball. The grandson of the lucky shoemaker, who 
made a fortune out of an army contract with the first 
Napoleon, now props the Papal finance and its tottering 
sovereignty.^ Everybody who banks with him is invited ; 
all notabilities, foreign ambassadors, and the like, are there. 
He keeps a palace expressly for his fetes, and mingles the 
splendid with the shabby in magnificent parsimony. Mau- 
rice, of course, Avas there. It was a scene of fairy-like en- 
chantment. Soft lights, from hundreds of wax-candles, 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


8i 


illuminated a brilliant suite of apartments. There was the 
reception-room, the music-room, the ball-room, the conver- 
sation-room, the card-room, where sat Antonelli, playing 

wdth Gen. , the French commander at Rome. The wives 

of the Roman noblesse, Orsini, Pamphili-Doria, Corsini, 
and a host of others, were there, blazing with necklaces 
of diamonds, family heirlooms, taken out of pawn for 
that one night. A Bavarian countess, with a magnificent 
diamond tiara, rivalled in her splendid beauty the fair 
Principessa Torlonia, the daughter of the Colonna. A 
Shrewsbury and a Dufferin bore up worthily the escutcheon 
of England’s proud, matronly loveliness; and the New 
World was represented by scores of delicate, superbly- 
toiletted beauties, in the evanescent spring-time of American 
belle-hood. There were serene Bostonians, secure in their 
Emersonian creed; that philosophy, and the rare accident of 
birth in the three-hilled city, had made them “lords” (or, 
rather, “ ladies”) — 

“of the sphere, 

The seven stars, and the solar year.” 

Besides these were the coldly-passionate girls of the South, 
full of retenue, yet ready to break forth into fire at a whisper 
against the haughty pretensions of their States; frank 
Philadelphians, showy New Yorkers, and not a damsel of 
them all but remembered and reverenced in her secret soul 
the tradition of the few peerless Americans, who, like the 
lady of Burleigh, had won, and, far more successfully than 
her, had worn, the perilous honors of transatlantic nobility. 

Verily, the American female-worship of the heraldic 
honors of the mediaeval time is fearfully and wonderfully 
ordered. It is the child’s reverence for age. Before it the 
best scheming of cunning mammas of that fearless, inde- 
fatigable British matronage goes down in dismay; but it 
buys dust and ashes at the price of life. Its type is the 
Balaclava Charge, of which France said, “C’esi niagnifique,, 
mais c^est ne pas la guerre^ 

Amid this throng Bryan met almost all his winter ac- 
quaintance. Even the younger members of the Quaker 
family were there; the sons rather “ loud” in dress and free 
in manner, and the daughter, while attired after the fashion 
of the “ world’s people,” preserving that indefinable air of 


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neatness and delicacy ^Y]nch is nowhere so sedulously taught 
and learned as in high-toned Quaker families. Without 
an ornament, and hardly with a bit of decided color in all 
her dress, the young Philadelphian attracted many eyes, 
and her frank enjoyment of what, to her, was a novel and 
exciting spectacle, was very pleasant to see. Maurice ob- 
tained an introduction, and as she did not dance, which, 
in the crush of the ball-room, was a toil of a pleasure, she 
accepted his arm and went with him to the other end of the 
grand suite of stately rooms, where was a little theatre, 
upon the mimic stage of which a company of no mean 
artists were performing a brilliant little comic opera. Like 
many Quakeresses, she was passionately fond of music, and 
was entirely enthralled in the witchery of that most magi- 
cal of entertainments. Her guarded home-experience gave 
her no inkling of what it was that she was at, — what to her 
would be a forbidden amusement, — nor had she become 
wiser abroad. Consequently she enjoyed with all her soul, 
and, after the/na/e, chatted with a child’s enthusiasm, and 
listened to Maurice’s account of the story, evidently without 
a scruple, while she visibly shrank from the card-room, and 
glanced with a look of lively horror at the impassive Car- 
dinal, who sat with a little heap of gold before him, vis-d-vis 
to the fat, gray French general. When Maurice pointed 
out to her the celebrities present, he was surprised at her 
familiarity with literature and history. A son of Mrs. 
Hemans was talking with an American poet, whose delicate 
verse and comic mastery of the humorous dialect of New 
England are alike unrivalled. The twin stars of Arno — 
Paracelsus and Aurora Leigh — were there, a German histo- 
rian and diplomat, and many another whose names were 
household words to her. After the airy ignorance of the 
New York belles, and the cool, critical 7iil admirari of 
Boston, this was very refreshing. Yet there was no attempt 
to play off upon him airs and graces. She talked to him 
as simply and unconsciously as to a brother, without a 
shadow of boldness, and yet without diffidence. We are to 
meet her again, and therefore I tell the story of the com- 
mencement of their acquaintance. 

Out of a ball-room it is a brief step into the scenes of 
Carnival week. It is a mad time in Eome, especially the 
last two days. Maurice was not too old for the fun, which 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


83 


is rather school-boy like, but for all that exciting, and, so 
far as the Italians are concerned, perfectly good-natured. 
He rode up and down the long line of carriages which slowly 
traversed the Corso. He flung bouquets to the ladies in the 
balconies, and confetti at the men on the sidewalk. Then 
he took a balcony at a friend’s lodging, and showered hand- 
fuls of the snowy hail, which is supposed by a conventional 
fiction to be sugar-plums, but which is only plaster and 
flour, into the open vehicles beneath. He saw the riderless 
horses, the fiery, fine-limbed Barbary colts race day after 
day. He had by this time “done” the galleries, the anti- 
quities, and all the lions thoroughly, and it was somewhat 
of a relief to get into such a practical present, after so much 
of the past, even though of such mad nonsense as the 
Carnival. He went home every night tired enough, yet not 
so tired but that he could spend an hour over a book. He 
was lodged at a house upon the slope of the Pincian Hill, 
and his room was at the top of the many-storied dwelling, 
looking out over the city. There at night he would sit 
reading, and step from the soft lamplight within out on to 
his balcony and muse long upon what he read. His book 
was one which Gardiner had lent him, — a brief history of 
the English Church. It was not at all polemical, quite 
elementary in fact, and would have been hastily glanced 
over at another time. Here its simple statements, read 
over and over, chapter by chapter, wrought with no little 
effect upon his mind. They opened new avenues for thought. 
He faced that disclosure, to a New-Englander so startling, 
of the organic continuity of the Anglo-Catholic Church, 
through the stormy period of the Reformation, and that still 
more startling point of its primitive independence of Rome 
and derivation from a Gallo-Oriental source. He had 
hitherto regarded the Church of England as one created 
upon the ruin of the old faith, very much as if the Chris- 
tians in Jerusalem had managed to outvote the Sanhedrim 
and take possession of the Temple. A restoration of what 
was primitive was an idea undreamt of hitherto in his phi- 
losophy. He conceded the point as respected England. 
Still the English Church was English, and by no means 
Catholic, and his present dream was the idea of Catholic 
unity. He had yet to grasp the idea of Episcopalians being 
other than a sect in America. That rooted idea of Congre- 


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gational New England, — the right of the majority to organ- 
ize belief and practice for themselves, — hindered him. The 
English Church was the Establishment; but we had no 
establishment, and therefore — here his logic went wool- 
gathering, and that conclusion was not yet. Thus matters 
stood when he went out on the evening of Shrove Tuesday, 
the night of the Mocoletti, the last night of the Carnival. 

The night of the Mocoletti is the one night of Roman 
gaiety. The whole length of the Corso, seen from above, is 
like a vast serpent formed of fire-flies. A torch-light pro- 
cession, or an illumination (and either of these, well managed, 
are sights of great beauty), is more imposing, but less 
magical, bewildering, grotesque. From every balcony, win- 
dow-ledge, and possible resting-place of man, glitters a 
myriad of little tapers. Everyb^ody is carrying a light, and 
everybody is trying to blow out his neighbor’s, while all 
throats send up a mocking, pealing chorus of “Senza 
mocolo, mocolo rn-o — co — l-o-o-o-o,” — in English, “without 
a light,” and intended as a taunt to those whose lights are 
extinguished. Young and active as he was, Maurice soon 
left the balcony of his friends and went down into the 
street, joining the throng on foot and mingling in the 
maddest of the sport. Now standing wdth one foot on the 
step of a carriage, he aimed a rapid blow at the twinkling 
spark of a solitary taper ; then, darting into the crowd, he 
slapped right and left with a knotted handkerchief at two 
flaming candles borne by two English middies ; next, with 
an active vault, he was on the back of a horse and snatched 
from the postillion a light, rekindled his own taper, blew out 
the stolen prize, and sprang to earth again amid the cheers 
of the beholders. He had reached in triumph the broad 
piazza in the midst of which towers the ancient column of 
Antoine, when a little eddying whirl of the crowd threw him 
outside the line of pedestrians. He paused to take breath 
and to look about him. All at once he caught sight of a 
female figure standing near the base of the pillar. There 
was that in her attitude so markedly unlike every other 
about him that he looked again. It was that of patient, 
drooping endurance, like that of the little girl in Ary 
Scheffer’s charming picture of the “Lost Children.” Yet 
she was not a child, and his next thought was of the lady 
in the Masque of Comus. The quiet neatness and precision 


Br.YAN MAUr<lCE OR THE SEEKER. 


85 


of her dress had a familiar look, and as he was trying to 
think where he had seen it, a surge of the crowd forced him 
close to her side. As he raised his little taper with the 
instinctive movement of light preservation, which is part of 
one’s habit on the night of the Mocoletti, the gleam fell 
upon her face and showed the features of the young Quaker- 
ess of Torlonia’s ball. 

“ You here, alone. Miss Winrow ! Can I help you?” ex- 
claimed he. 

She gave a little half-sob, half-cry, and clasped his arm 
with both her hands. “ I have lost ray party,” she said, 
“ and could not get through the crowd. My brother is so 
wild ; and thee knows,” said she, lapsing unconsciously into 
the familiar speech of her childhood, “ young men do not 
care much for their sisters.” 

“ Permit me to take the place of this lost brother,” said 
Maurice. “ You are stopping at ?” 

“ The Hotel del Europa on the . I have forgotten 

the street.” 

“I know it well,” said Maurice, “but are you equal to 
the long walk we must take, unless we can break through 
the line of carriages? We must, I fear, go round the head 
of the Corso.” 

“ Oh yes,” said she. “ I don’t mind the walk ; but 
Thomas — he may miss me and return here.” 

“ I think I ought to get you home first, and then try to 
hunt him up.” 

“Thank thee; perhaps it would be best so,” she an- 
swered ; “ but thee, you 1 mean, will lose the spectacle.” 

“ Oh never mind that,” said Maurice, flinging away his 
taper and leading her at once out of the crowd. 

He had at once a sense of grave responsibility. It is not 
so easy to traverse Home by night. One may easily lose 
his way, and some quarters are neither reputable nor safe 
after nightfall. Maurice was familiar with the streets of 
the city, but in his anxiety to spare his companion unne- 
cessary walking he several times missed his road, and once 
had to leave her outside at the door of a wine-shop while 
he inquired within the route. Not until he reached the 
broader and more frequented Via Babuino did he breathe 
freely. When at length he emerged into that well-known 
thoroughfare, he gave a long sigh of relief. 

8 


8G 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


JMiss Winrow had kept silent pace with him, Avalking 
with the short, tripping step which betrayed her scliooling 
over the brick smoothness of Arch and Chestnut Streets. 
She had kept silent as long as she had seen him per- 
plexed with the intricacies of the way, but now spoke. 
“ Is thee — are you tired?” 

“ Oh, no,” said he, “ only wonderfully relieved to know 
just where I am and to have you in comparative safety.” 

“ Were we not safe ?” said she. “ I have not felt afraid.” 

“ Well, to tell the truth, I have been more anxious than 
I care to be again, for the last ten minutes, ever since we 
passed that cut-throat looking group of men under the little 
shrine on the corner where the light was burning before the 
Virgin.” 

She turned her face, with a look of quiet, grateful sweet- 
ness upon it, toward him and said, “ Then I have to thank 
thee for more than I know.” 

“ Oh, that is nothing,” said he, “ only I am glad we are 
well out of it. But were not you frightened before I met 
you all alone in the crowd ?” 

“ No, not frightened ; I was thinking of something I once 
did which seems to me might be very wrong ; and yet, I 
don’t know why, I felt, if I never got out of the danger 
alive, it would be a real comfort.” 

“What can it be?” thought Bryan. 

She seemed to make a sudden effort over herself, and 
then said, “ I must tell you what it was or you will think it 
so strange ; besides, I have long wanted to tell some one 
not of my own family.” Maurice could think of nothing 
but a love-affair, and was inwardly disgusted at being taken 
for one so old and grave that he might safely be father- 
confessor of such confidences. He simply said, “ Your 
secret will be safe with me. Miss AVinrow, and such advice 
as I have to give is at your service.” 

“Well, if you do not mind a long story I will tell it, for 
I really want to know if I have done wrong. Only I must 
begin at the beginning. I have a school-friend who came 
from New York. Her father Avas a Friend — a Quaker, 
thee knows, but her mother was not ; she was an Episco- 
palian, and Letty was brought up to that, and when her 
mother died, she made Letty promise to be true to her 
Church till she was a woman. We were great friends at 


BPvYAN MAUBICE OR THE SEEKER. 


87 


school, and ^vhen we left she was always writing to have 
me visit her. So just before we were coming away here I 
went to spend a month with her. She was not a gay girl 
at all ever, but now I found her more good and quiet, and 
so fond of her Church. Of course I did not think as she 
did, and at first did not care to talk with her about it, only 
I could not help hearing what was said between her friends 
who called on her. First-days — Sundays — I used to go to 
Friends’ meeting with Letty’s father, as I promised at h^ome 
I would, but week-days she got me to go with her. At first 
it was so strange, but I liked it better and better. There 
was a church near where they had daily prayers at nine 
and five, and Letty never missed going, if she was well. I 
liked to see the little children baptized, as almost always 
on Wednesday and Saturday one or two were brought, and 
at home I used to read over the service in the Prayer-Book, 
and then I found there was another service for grown-up 
people, so I read that too ; and then I took the Bible and 
found the places which the book alluded to, and it made 
me feel as if Friends’ Society had been mistaken in this 
thing. One First-day evening we were sitting in the parlor, 
and a friend of Letty’s came in. He was a young minister, 
and Letty was engaged to him, but they would not let me 
leave them, though I tried to. Letty was just so nice and 
thoughtful of others, and he seemed just as good as she. 
He soon found out what I was, and then I asked him some 
things about the service which I could not understand; and 
so I can’t tell how it came on, but I said, ‘I wish I had 
been brought as a little child.’ ‘ It is not too late now, is 
it?’ he said ; but Letty turned the subject before I could 
answer. But after we got up to our room at night, she 
spoke of it herself. I had been thinking about it all the 
time in meeting, and I did long for it more than any one 
could tell. So as we sat there, and I was at the glass 
putting up my hair, I told Letty I meant to go forward the 
next time there was a baptism. We talked a long time 
about it, but neither of us thought of father and mother, 
what they would think, and that is what seems to me now 
so wrong, though they are not strict at all. The next day 
Letty was not well, and I went to service alone. There 
were but few people in the church, which seems to me so 
strange, for I would go whenever I possibly could. I sat 


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BPvVAX MAURICE OP THE SEEKEP. 


up in front, for in Friends’ meeting we young people often 
do, on the low benches ; so after service was over I stopped 
to look at the font. It was a very beautiful one, of white 
marble, and carved on all the panels. While I stood 
there, Letty’s young clergyman came back into the church. 
He had read service that morning. It seemed to me I must 
speak then, I was to go home so very soon, and I said, ‘I 
wish I might come here.’ ‘Why should not you come?’ said 
he. Then I told him I had never thought of it till lately, 
but I wished it so much and believed it to be right. He 
asked me some questions as to what I believed and as to 
what I thought baptism meant, and then he begged me to 
wait a minute. He went away, and presently the other 
clergyman of the church came back with him. He was an 
elderly man, his hair quite white, and such a pleasant, good 
face, the purest, gentlest looking face I ever saw. ‘Well, 
my daughter,’ he said, ‘you want to be baptized. From 

what Mr. tells me I think I ought to receive you ; but 

is there any reason why you should not come?’ ‘No,’ I said, 
‘there is none.’ ‘Are you free to decide this for yourself? 
Is there no one you should first consult?’ I really did not 
think father and mother would care, for when my Cousin 
Eobert became a Presbyterian they blamed Uncle Eobert 
and Aunt Catherine quite a good deal for being so put out 
about it ; and I remember they said if Eobert only followed 
the inward light, he ought not to be blamed. So I said 
‘No.’ If I could have written and got an answer, I should 
have waited ; but I knew I could not, for as soon as I 
returned home we expected to start for Europe. I thought 
of the great ocean which I dreaded so much, and so I said, 
‘I would like to come this afternoon, and Letty will come 
to stand up with me.’ ‘What! Miss ? My own god- 

child? Oh, if she is your witness,’ said the old clergyman, 
‘it can’t be wrong. She never did anything wrong since 
she was a wee baby.’ Well, after I went home and talked 
with Letty, she insisted upon being well enough to go with 
me, though she had a sick-headache almost, and she took 

me to Doctor ’s study, and he had a long talk with us, 

and Letty made a great many things plain to me, for she 
understood Friends’ ways, and helped me to tell the Doctor 
wliat I meant, only I could not express it rightly. So we 
came to the church at five that afternoon ; not many there. 


BUYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


89 


but all seemed like people who really loved tO come, and 
the church not very light, but quiet and gentle for all the 
bustle of the streets outside. It seemed to me as though I 
had really left the world behind me. When the time for 
baptizing came my heart beat quick, and I would have kept 
still ; but Letty gave me a quiet pressure of the hand, and 
untied and took off my bonnet, and led the way. The 
3mung clergyman came and stood on the other side in that 
white dress thee knows they wear ; and such a dear, good 
lady, with a sad, sad face, like one that had known trouble, 
but found real comfort too, came and stood next Letty. It 
made me feel stronger at once, and when the questions were 
put to me, I did not look on my book at all, but tried to 
speak them right out of my own heart, for I meant them 
just as truly as I ever hope to mean anything. It seems 
strange now, but when the water touched me, it was like 
washing off all light and vain feelings, and I did promise 
in my heart to try to be kind and true to every one ; and 
when he made the sign of the cross on my forehead, it 
seemed like taking up the Saviour’s cross. Then afterward 
it was so very dear to have everybody kneel down and join 
in the Lord’s Prayer; it was as if we were all one family.” 

“ But, MissWinrow,” said Maurice, who had listened with 
great astonishment first, and then with eager interest, “ you 
surely don’t think this was wrong. I w’ould give my right 
hand this moment to feel as you did.” 

“ No, not that so much, but afterward, not telling mother. 
To-night, just before you came to me, I was so distressed 
thinking of that. Ought not I to tell her now?” 

Among the books Maurice had read in the Propaganda 
Library, was one put into his hands with special reference 
to the question of secret conversion to Romanism. It had 
strongly attracted him, for it set forth the advantage of being 
in the service of the Church and leading others to it without 
being an avowed member. All young men’s minds are 
fascinated with the notion of a secret society in which to 
exert great and unsuspected power. This was most artfully 
put. He was well aware of the unpopularity which the 
becoming a Romanist would bring upon him at home. The 
point was cunningly argued ; the lawfulness of dissimulating 
because of the unreasonable prejudices of others. All its 
sophisms rose at once before him. For himself he had 


90 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


been halt persuaded, but when it came to applying that 
reasoning to the case of another, of a pure, innocent young 
girl, then looking trustfully at him for an answer, the lie 
shocked him, and thus the last lingering spell of Rome 
vanished into thin air at the Ithuriel spear. 

“ You ought to tell,” said he. “ Mind, I do not blame 
you for not having told ; only I say tell now.” 

Her only answer was at first a low sob. Then she 
gathered strength to speak. “ Thou hast been a true friend. 
God sent thee just when I needed.” 

Maurice was too much moved to reply. They were by 
this time at the Hotel del Europa. Two gentlemen stood 
in the porte cochere, trying to induce a coachman to let them 
take his vehicle, and evidently under strong but subdued 
excitement. 

“Father — Thomas — here I am !” exclaimed she. And 
in a moment was in the arms of the elder, with whom the 
decorum of Quaker reserve utterly broke down for a momnt. 
Maurice was going, but the younger detained him. And 
then, after a word or two from his daughter, the old gentle- 
man addressed him — 

“ We cannot thank thee enough for bringing Ellen back 
safe. What is thy name?” 

A few words of explanation and introduction followed, 
and Maurice was eagerly besought to call on the morrow. 

“ My wdfe,” said the old gentleman, “ will then be able to 
see thee; her fright to-night has been too much for her, but 
Bryan thee has done us a service we can never forget.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


B ryan was punctual in his next morning’s call upon his 
Philadelphian friends. He found the ladies in, was 
presented to the mother, whose eyes filled with tears as she 
greeted him, though her thanks were expressed in a quiet, 
subdued tone, and with that careful avoidance of all ex- 
travagance of phrase which none but a Quaker matron 
seems wholly able to attain. Maurice remembered that he 
had been thanked with four times as much empressement 
by a New York dame only the week before, upon the occa- 
sion of his bringing back a coral pin lost by her at 
Frascati. He wished that Mrs. AVinrow would leave them 
to a tete-a-tete, but she showed no signs of stirring. He was 
longing to ask the young lady if she had told her mother 
and what the result had been. Presently Mrs. Winrow 
glanced at the clock and said to her daughter, “Ellen, this 
is one of thy meeting days, I believe, — isn’t it? Thee ought 
to go, if thee has taken that for thy choice.” Miss Winrow 
colored slightly, and her mother went on, addressing Mau- 
rice, “If thou wilt accompany my daughter, unless thou 
hast scruples, I will take it kindly. She does not know 
how to find the English Chapel, and I think she hardly 
ought to go alone.” Maurice professed himself delighted 
and that he had no scruples, and Ellen left the room to put 
oil her bonnet. Two things struck Maurice as strange. 
He noticed the correctness of the elder lady’s grammar 
when she spoke to him, and its constant error as she talked 
with her daughter. I believe it is universal. I never knew 
but one Quaker who did not, in the bosom of the family, 
use the objective for the nominative of the personal pro- 
noun. AVith a stranger many will be scrupulously accurate. 
The second thing was the utter unconventionality of the 
whole proceeding in selecting him for her daughter’s escort. 


92 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


Miss Winrow returned in a moment, and with her came her 
brother. “Thomas will go with us,” she said to her mother, 
who gave a half sigh, and then replied, “Yes, he will learn 
the way to wait upon thee in future, but not to go in.” The 
young man’s face lightened considerably at his escape from 
what he evidently felt to be a penance due to his neglect 
the night before. “I will wait for thee, outside, Ellen,” he 
said ; and the three left the hotel together. If the reader 
knows the thoughts and ways of “Friends’ Society,” the 
explanation of the above arrangement will not be needed, 
l^^or the uninitiated it will be necessary to add something. 

Mrs. Winrow did not wish her son to enter the doors of 
the English Chapel. She was too conscientious to keep 
Ellen back, and she saw less harm in trusting her daughter 
to the care of a stranger than her son to the perversions of 
that Church which is looked upon with a traditional but 
special disfavor in the tenets of Quakerism. As a matter 
of fact, the Church is most congenial to these good people; 
only by tradition and the Book of Discipline they are bound 
to hold it anathema. 

Ellen had her own feeling of the proprieties, however, 
and she had insisted on having her brother’s escort. That 
young gentleman expressed himself artlessly enough over 
his good luck. 

“ Mother needn’t be worried about me. I’ll go and smoke 
a cigar in the square, and if there is any music in either of 
the churches there. I’ll look in. She doesn’t mind my go- 
ing to the Catholic churches: but sis. I’ll be sure to be on 
hand when thee comes out; it is now quarter to eleven, and 
it will be twelve before thee wants me,” He kept close be- 
side his sister, however, till they reached the door of the 
English Chapel, which is, or then was, just outside the Porta 
del Popolo. Maurice thought him immensely de trop, but 
to his surprise Miss Winrow spoke freely. “You see, Mr. 
Maurice, I have told my mother, and she at once decided 
thus. You know that to-day is Ash-Wednesday, and all 
good church people keep it.” — “But how did your mother 
come to know that?” — “She was once engaged, she told me, 
before she married father, to an Episcopal clergyman, but 
her parents broke it off, and I think she knows a great deal 
about the Church, but she feels it would not be right to 
think of it now. She told me this this inornino:, when I 

O' 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


93 


told her what I said to you last night. She said she was 
more grateful to you for advising me as you did, than even 
for bringing me home safe. From something she half said, 
I could not help fancying that it was some concealment on 
her part which broke the engagement. Poor mother! it 
was a trial to her, but not so much nor in the same way I 
feared. But she begged me not to try to influence Thomas, 
and I have promised I would not, and — only think — she 
gave me this.” As she spoke, she put the little prayer-book 
Maurice had noticed that she was carrying into his hands. 
It was a little volume somewhat worn, with a tiny cross 
stamped, but not gilt, upon the cover. Upon the fly-leaf 
was written, “Hester Archer from A. H. S., Easter Even, 
1821.” This was in faded ink: below it the mother had 
pencilled, “Hester Winrow to her daughter Ellen,” and 
Ellen had added the date. Ash -Wednesday, 18 — . They 
reached the chapel entrance. Maurice had not thought of 
going to church that day; but feeling a strong hope that 
the brother’s care of the young Quaker would be as remiss 
as on the previous night, he very cheerfully declined the 
invitation of the latter to wait outside and to stroll on the 
Pincia. So he went with Ellen, and was rather surprised 
to find the bare, uninviting interior quite full. They, how- 
ever, succeeded in finding a place quite near the extempo- 
rized chancel. IMaurice was not so strange to the usages of 
the place but that he could imitate his companion in her 
quiet act of private prayer, and it composed his thoughts. 
The white-robed priest entered, not the usual chaplain, but 
a slender, pale, and tall man, whose face impressed Maurice 
at the first glance with a sense of power. Still more did 
the full, rich tones of a voice exquisitely modulated and 
pervaded with a sad solemnity, in entire keeping with the 
])enitential service. Maurice had no difficulty in finding 
his places, for the little hands which held the book before 
him pointed at once to the proper page and line, and the 
low voice of Ellen came truly in with every response, save 
only where the English book was varied from the one she 
held. All through to the close of the Litany, the spell of 
the service grew deeper and deeper. 

But neither of the young Americans were prepared for 
what followed when the clergyman rose from his knees, and 
the congregation with him, and after a moment’s pause, 


94 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


began the Commination Preface. Miss Winrow turned the 
leaves of her prayer-book confusedly, then closed it and 
remained listening. But the ear of Maurice had caught 
the first sentence and moved him to attend further. “ Bre- 
thren,” the priest said, “ in the Primitive Church there was 
a godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such 
persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open 
penance and punished in this world, that their souls might 
be saved in the day of the Lord, and that others, admon- 
ished by their example, might be the more afraid to 
offend.” 

So natural was the manner of the clergyman that Mau- 
rice could hardly tell whether it was an extemporized ex- 
hortation, or read from the book. It was not until he 
entered upon the comminatory sentences that Maurice 
determined the point, and then his next neighbor, a lady 
in black, put into his hand one of the Chapel prayer-books 
open at the proper place. 

Maurice was soon in a strange conflict of feeling. Used 
to the soft and soothing words of the Cambridge Unitarian- 
ism of his day, to hopeful utterances about the progress of 
the race, the beautiful ideal humanitarianism wLich has 
presented perhaps as never so well before the perfection of 
the Lord’s nature as man, his spirit rose in intense rebellion 
against the uncompromising old Hebrew denunciations. 
Nor was his mood soothed by the imploring, yet warning 
address which followed. He unconsciously stood more erect 
than usual, as if bracing himself against it. But those 
ringing, searching tones right out of the heart of the 
speaker, not in routine formality of customary service, but 
poured forth with the tremulous eagerness which made the 
eye lighten, and the slight gesture of the hand, scarce lifted 
from the desk cushion, instinct with all a prophet’s fire — 
these bore him in spite of himself along the tide. And 
when all sank upon their knees with that instinctive habi- 
tude which the Church makes so natural to her children, 
and which is so unlike the hesitating or wilful fashions of 
Independency, and together began the Miserere, Maurice 
could keep back his voice no longer. For let humanity be 
what it might, he was personally conscious of the fact of 
sin ; the remembrance of many an ill-spent hour came to 
haunt him. Tears unbidden gathered in his eyes, and 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


95 


twice ere the service was ended his voice, in spite of all his 
young man’s shyness and wilful reserve, faltered almost to 
pausing with scarce controlled emotion. 

It was a positive relief when, after the gospel for tlie 
day, the priest began to announce the order of the Lenten 
services. Daily prayer was to be at ten and five, and then 
some special services were mentioned, the meaning of which 
utterly escaped our young Harvardite. 

When this was over, Maurice thought surely he will not 
attempt to preach ! but giving out a couple of verses of a 
hymn, he knelt down at the altar during the singing, and, 
then at its close, standing just behind the chancel rail, 
began to speak. Maurice half-listened as one who hears 
with the outward ear only, until his wandering thoughts 
were called back by one short sharp sentence — “Sorrow for 
sin is not repentance. That means turning back. He who 
is lost in the desert is sorry, but if he will not lift his eye to 
the star, or cast it downward upon the compass, but per- 
sists in tracing the weary round of his own footsteps, his 
sorrow will not bring him to safety. He who is adrift upon 
a planh in the midst of ocean is sorry, but if he will make no 
signal to the passing bark or raise liis voice in entreaty, he 
will not be taken to the haven where he would be. He is 
not seeking to be saved. All men are sorry after wrong- 
doing, but not all with the godly sorrow that worketh 
repentance. Men who doubt are not happy in their unbe- 
lief, but they may be content. Men who sin are not happy 
in their sinfulness, but they do not repent until they seek 
to forsake. Penance is not penitence. It is paying an old 
debt with a new promise. It is going to the debtors’ prison 
in order presently to be discharged bankrupt ; it satisfies 
no creditor. Suffering does not atone. Were those eighteen 
upon whom the tower of Siloam fell sinners above all that 
were in Jerusalem ? I tell you nay, but except ye repent, 
ye shall all likewise perish.” 

How much more Maurice heard, he never could rightly 
say, but this brief extract took strong hold upon him. He 
went silently forth with the young Quakeress and turned 
homeward. By the obelisk in the centre of the Piazza del 
Popolo they found her brother, not sulky precisely, but 
evidently bored to the last point of endurance by long 
waiting. “ It is two good hours you have been in there, 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


sis — it is worse than yearly meeting. Come and have some 
lunch — you must be half-starved,” said he. “I must go 
home, Tliomas,” said the young lady. “ Oh, I didn’t mean 
you, sis,” said he, half blushing; “it isn’t like Parkinson’s 
iiere, Avhere one can take a lady ; but Mr. Maurice — he has 
earned the right to something.” Maurice was half-inclined 
to accept. He did not fancy his companion, but he was 
ready, as your traveller of a year’s experience is apt to be, 
to fraternize with any one who is decent, knowing that 
nothing is easier than to shake off a troublesome companion 
unless he have a home mortgage on you, in the which case 
it is difficult. He felt that the young man was anxious to 
show him some attention for what he had done the evening 
previous, and that he could hardly, in courtesy, decline 
without some excuse. “After we have seen your sister 
home, and I have been to the hotel for my letters,” he said, 
“ perhaps I will.” Tliey walked a few steps further, when 
Miss Winrow put her little prayer-book into Maurice’s 
hand, pointing with her finger to a particular line. He 
read the designated words — “Days of Fasting : Ash Wednes- 
day and Good Friday.” “But,” said he, answering her 
thought aloud, “ I am not an Episcopalian.” “You will 
be,” she answered ; “ nothing else will satisfy you — some- 
thing tells me you will.” 

However, Maurice found the excuse he was thinking of 
converted into a real reason when he got his letters. One 
was from Frank Goodstowe’s uncle and former guardian, 
to whom he had written the news of Frank’s death : Frank, 
it seems, had left quite a large property. The will depo- 
sited in New York had been destroyed by fire, but there 
ought to be a duplicate, or else one of later execution, in 
Frank’s own keeping. It was necessary that Maurice 
should return and bring that, and attest that it had been 
in his charge. The letter contained an order on the Ame- 
rican Steamship Company for a passage in the Liverpool 
steamer of June, and an ample draft for all travelling ex- 
penses incurred by the journey, and the promise to make 
good the cost of revisiting Europe again. But very urgent 
reasons were stated for Maurice not to delay his home-trip 
later than June. Maurice found he should have just eight 
weeks left to visit Naples, to pass Holy Week in Kome, 
and to return by way of France to London, if he expected 


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97 


to have a fortnight to spare in England. So he resolved to 
start immediately for the South of Italy, and therefore 
spent the rest of the day in packing, having his passport 
vised, and in doing up such odds and ends as the best 
trained tourist always finds loose at an unexpected sum- 
mons. 

He wrote a brief note to Miss Winrow to say that he 
should not see her again unless she was in Rome during 
Holy AVeek, and excusing himself from a half-implied 
promise to attend the morning service the next day at the 
Chapel. 

He found at the tahle-dhote that evening an old college 
friend — two or three years older in standing than himself. 
They met and greeted heartily. Langdon, for that was his 
name, had been in a German university, and intended to 
return in the autumn to take his doctor’s degrees. 

It is four weeks after that Ash Wednesday, and we have 
passed from the narrow streets of Rome to the lovely land- 
scape which one looks upon from the crest of the height of 
St. Agatha — the beautiful bays of Naples and Salerno. Two 
young men are sitting gazing upon it, and drinking in the 
soft languor of the spring atmosphere. They have been 
making the most of the previous days, and have visited 
every point in the scene before them. They have climbed 
Vesuvius painfully, and slidden down its cone dustily and 
gleefully ; have lunched at the Hermitage, have stood in 
the depths of Herculanean excavations, and in the Forum 
of Pompeii. Capri, where they spent such a charming day, 
floats midway between the blue heavens and the blue sea. 
There across the bay is the classic Cape of Misenum ; far 
to the south lie the three wondrous temples of Psestum, in 
the midst of the malaria-haunted marshes ; and close beneath 
their feet is the long glen at the head of which stands the 
famous monastery of La Cava. All these they have seen, 
and more yet which must pass unchronicled. They have 
been draining the cup of Neapolitan enjoyment ; one day, 
the vivid life of the most stirring streets in Europe ; the 
next, the petrified repose of those streets upon which for 
eighteen centuries nearly oblivion has brooded. As in 
Rome one’s thought naturally turns to Religion, so in 
Naples it turns as naturally to History. In Rome there 
has always lingered the tradition of that ancient Etruscan 


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tribe which flung itself like a gauntlet into the midst of the 
Alban peoples — and this, in spite of Virgiliau epics and 
Livian romances, has stamped the permanent homogeneous 
character upon the Eternal City. Changes innumerable have 
indeed passed over her, but underneath all there is the one 
stern elemental instinct of domination. Rome is the parent 
of the papacy — and the papacy out of Rome is an anomaly 
and a failure. But Naples is full of history. One sees the 
Grecian traces everywhere ; then the influence of Asian 
voluptuousness and Egyptian mystery ; and then suddenly 
into the midst leaps the Norman Crusader, and marks out 
his realm by the sweep of his sword-point to north, south, 
east, and west. The young men in their daily chat had 
been going over these matters. Maurice, with the enthusi- 
astic romance of a young scholar, caught by the surface 
glitter and glow ; Langdon, with the far deeper, more accu- 
rate learning, the result of his three years’ study in Germany, 
withal digested and made ready for use with the clearness 
and quickness of the American brain. Without any dogmatic 
overbearingness, but simply by the force of a clearer under- 
standing and a wider knowledge of the facts, he had 
established over Maurice a great unconscious influence. 
The dreamy languor of noontide was upon them. Maurice 
was pulling off the orange flowers from a bough he held in 
his hand, and Langdon quietly peeling the fruit of the same. 
To-morrow, after four weeks of constant companionship, they 
were to part — one for the Orient, one for the West. “ Just 
think of it, Langdon — two months hence and I shall be in 
America, and you in Jerusalem or Damascus.” “Yes, I 
suppose so. I wish we were to change places,” said Langdon. 
And the fair-haired, broad-browed young American stretched 
his athletic form lazily. “ I am rather worrying to get to 
work, but I must ‘ do’ the East. I hope to get a chance at 
Cairo and the Nile, though it is fearfully late; but then 
hang Palestine; I expect to be bored with monks, and 
relics, and Bible-stories, at the cost of six dollars a day and 
the chance of Syrian fever.” “Why do you go, then?” 
“Oh, I want to work out on the spot my theory of the 
mythical origin of Christianity. You see, at Tubingen our 
professors were keen enough to see that for all Strauss was 
right, he was terribly to seek in one thing. He hasn’t 
accounted for the New Testament writings.” 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


99 


“ No, I should think not. Men don’t write a history of an 
imaginary personage who never was.” 

“ Don.’t they though ? I should think you had never 
read of Pius JEneas, or of Odin, or of King Arthur. How- 
ever, there the books are and must be accounted for. Now 
there are two things I never could reconcile : the miracles, 
which can’t be received, and the character of Jesus Christ, 
wdiich I do not believe Is a forgery of priestcraft. The men 
who could invent such an ideal must be themselves a miracle. 
The puzzle to me is how this religious idea — for I still reject 
the notion of any real personality of Jesus of Nazareth — 
has become the perfect mover of man’s aspirations. Some- 
how the Hebrew mind Avas peculiarly fitted to bring out 
that thought to perfection. The troubled state of the whole 
world as it came under the Roman yoke resulted in a deter- 
mination of all impure humors to the one centre at Rome. 
There was among the small ascetic sects of Palestine a Avon- 
derful purity and simplicity, and all this suddenly seems to 
have freed itself from other elements, and crystallized pure 
and perfect about the ancient Messianic legends. Noav the 
historic fact is that there Avere many Christs, and the pro- 
bability is, that out of these different claimants to the title 
and the hereditary throne of David has been made up the 
legend as we have it. The fact in the gospels that one 
belonged to Bethlehem, the other to Nazareth is alone con- 
clusive. Luke and Matthew won’t square upon the same 
platform any Avay.” 

“But A\diat do you say to the miracles — how can you 
take one part and not another of the story?” 

“Allegory — my boy — allegory. You don’t know hoAV 
entirely the Eastern mind wraps up all truth in that shape 
— just as they always bury all the coin they get. Its 
instincts are all esoteric. The difficulty is to get the key, 
and I think I have it. These books, you know, in any 
e\^ent must have been written after the events they describe 
— you admit that.” Maurice never had thought of that 
before, having the hazy Protestant impression that the 
Church was somehoAV born with the Bible in its hand. 
HoAvever, he said, “Yes,” not very Avell seeing hoAV he could 
say “No.” 

“Very Avell, then ; there are tAVO things to account for — 
the Church, Avhich must have been first in existence, and 


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then the books. The parsons all fall back upon the miraclevi, 
according to Paley and Butler and all that. But we, who 
reject the miracles, have another course to take. The 
Church is established, a Hebrew ascetic sect founded on this 
legendary expectation of Messiah. Nothing more natural. 
The books are written in the interest of different parties in 
that. Now one has only to get the state of parties in that 
era, to have the key of the miracles in their allegorical 
bearing. Now for that we must go on to the first clear 
historical point where Paul comes on the stage. He was 
a man of first-rate abilities, a great man, young, and in the 
prime of his powers. He was an extra-Palestinian — that is 
a Jew who believed in the nationality, but not the locality 
of the nation. There was a great deal of party spirit over 
that point, Stephen the martyr was put to death in that 
quarrel, ahd Paul was in that business. At first, though, 
he was on the Palestinian side — that was GamalieFs in- 
fluence, no doubt. He continued on that side till the 
Damascus journey. He found himself betrayed by the 
people in power in the Sanhedrim. The fact was, he was 
too vigorous and rising a man for those old gray-beard 
plotters. So just at the gate of Damascus he is struck down 
by one of his own troop bribed to assassinate him. He is 
rescued and carried into the city, and there the plotters, 
who have failed of their first stroke, conceive the brilliant 
idea of disposing of Paul and throwing the odium of it 
upon the Christians.” 

“But who are the Christians?” said Maurice. “Oh, this 
Messianic sect. It is a sort of jacquerie at first, a peasant 
revolt against the tax-gatherers and the Romans. Then 
out of it has grown a secret association founded on the 
belief that their lost leader has returned to life. That is 
one of the universal myths you know, and just the 
strongest possible bond of union. Moreover, they are 
a fixed fact to be assumed for the present, one of the 
phenomena of the time. Well, Saul of Tarsus is delivered 
to them. He is a Pharisee, and the Sadducees had got the 
better of him for the time. While he lies there wounded in 
Damascus, in the hands of the Christians, Nazarenes his- 
torically at that time, who evidently suspect the trap, and 
think the best thing is to let him get well if he can, he 
comes to a really magnificent conclusion. You see you owe 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 10 J 

no fealty to people who stab you in the back. He will 
therefore abandon his old party, and he will turn the tables 
on them, using their very attempt most effectively. He 
puts himself into the hands of the Nazareiies. He sees that 
Jerusalem is doomed. Hitherto he has had a conflict of 
duties. He is a Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews ; he is also 
a Roman citizen, a Tarsite, a Cilician. The extra-Pales- 
tinian policy will reconcile these two. And he will make 
use of the Nazarene order to carry out his plans. He 
learns their principles, and at a glance takes in the enor- 
mous capabilities of the league. The Jewish people shall 
survive, but no longer as a nation, — the Empire will never 
permit that ; nor as a tributary province, — Hebrew pride 
forbids, but as a secret society. Such an association, based 
on Oriental ideas, can do what it will. So he seizes at once 
upon its fundamental legend, — of the rising from the dead 
of Jesus, — and uses it to account for his own change. No 
mortal hand struck him down, he says. He is theirs to 
live and die in the faith of their dead Leader, whose resur- 
rection he thus testifies to. The order at once feels his 
presence and leadership. He goes into Arabia, in the hope 
of stirring up the pure original stock of the Hebrew people. 
He fails there. That work was reserved for Mahomet. 
However, he gains experience, and turns to bring in the 
foreign Jews in Syria and Asia Minor, and that with some 
success. Now, however, he comes to an issue with the 
Jerusalem party, who are still clinging to the old Pales- 
tinian notions. He is too politic, however, to break with 
them ; temporizes, submits, professes to consult with them, 
but sees their impracticability and narrow-mindedness. He 
conceives the gigantic idea of swamping them in the order, 
and of extending that beyond the Hebrew race to the 
Eastern Gentiles. He finds that the foreign Jews are too 
few and too scattered, — too much under the spell of the old 
Mosaic and Davidic institutions for his purposes. AVell, he 
seizes the time when Peter — always rash and headstrong — 
has made advances to the Roman soldiery in Judea. 
Peter’s idea — not a bad one, only impracticable — is to make 
proselytes of the gate from the legionaries, and thus to have 
the army, or a part of them, in the control of the chiefs of 
the order. He actually initiates the centurion Cornelius. 
Paul takes that up, and Peter is caught in his own trap. 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


Now here, at once, are two allegories of the gospels in plain 
view: Peter walking upon the water and sinking, and his 
cutting off the ear of Malchus. For you see we come to the 
time of the gospel writings. Matthew, the wisest and most 
learned of the original council of twelve — the number of the 
tribes, you know — has written a history of the earlier 
legends in the interest of the Jerusalem party. Paul gets 
Luke to write a counter-statement, in behalf of the Gentile 
movement. Peter, finding his own influence imperilled, 
starts Mark upon the same business. Only, you see, he 
must keep well with the whole society and all parties ; so 
that account is constructed upon the principle of avoiding 
all controverted points. Then Paul attempts a wider range. 
He follows up Luke’s first pamphlet with a second, of which 
the main part is the history of his own connection with the 
Church. And especially in that he is most artfully desig- 
nated as the Apostle to the Gentiles, with a sort of headship 
of the extra-Palestinian branch. And this course of his he 
carries on with ever more and more of magnificent audacity 
and genius, equal to all emergencies. It is perfectly 
splendid.” 

“ But, Langdon, what do you make of St. John’s Gospel?” 

“ Oh, that is the work of John of Ephesus, John the 
Presbyter, or, perhaps, written in the interest of a later 
theology. You see, of course, the idea primitively, that of 
political rule in Judea, gave place to a religious idea after 
Jerusalem passed away. It is the Hebrew Eleusis — must 
have a mystery at the bottom of it.” 

“ Well, but there are the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the 
Mount — ^you believe in them, surely ?” 

“ Why, yes, after a sort ; only these seem to me to em- 
body the theocratic ideas of Israel. It is just a homily to 
the Jewish people, to induce them not to revolt against the 
Bomans, but to keep quiet and obey the old commandments, 
and God will repeat for them the old Egyptian tradition. 
That very sermon Luke breaks up into fragments, and 
scatters about his Gospel, in order to destroy just that very 
application of it.” 

“But,” said Maurice — much bewildered by this new 
style of handling the Scripture he had always more reve- 
renced than read — “ seems to me you make St. Paul anything 
but a good mail.” 


BKYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER, 


103 


“ Oil, he was as good as his age. He was, primarily, full 
of the order. It is a most instructive history, the gradual 
development of his policy; how from a zealous Jew he gets 
fairly into the other extreme, from the simple widening of 
his point of view. Judaism is ‘sacrificed on its own altar. 
He says he became all things to all men. But what a splen- 
did genius! I read his Epistles continually; the most per- 
fect of gentlemen, brave, far-sighted, utterly regardless of 
self; the prototype of Loyola, or, rather, the great ideal both 
of the Jesuit and the Crusader. He took up there at 
Damascus the poor little starveling sect of Jewish malecon- 
tents, and made of it a power the end of which is not yet” 

Maurice was both pained and perplexed, but he could not 
reply satisfactorily. They talked all the way as they slowly 
sauntered down the heights to their inn — the delightful 
“ Iron Crown,” at Sorrento. They sat late into the night 
hearing, but not heeding, the murmur of the waves washing 
the base of the cliffs beneath their room. Langdon brought 
to bear upon the discussion a mass of critical scholarship 
that Maurice could not cope with. He was familiar with 
the Greek Testament in all its readings, and illustrated his 
dazzling paradoxes from a storehouse which seemed to 
contain the buried treasures of classic antiquity. He was 
entirely in earnest withal, though utterly given over to the 
spirit of criticism, which is sublime in dissection, but can 
achieve no other result than to fling upon the table a heap 
of nerves, and bones, and muscles, and to say. Behold what 
was once a man. 

But out of this he had essayed, like Frankenstein, to 
build up his monstrous giant. Maurice, while borne along 
the tide of his eager rhetoric, felt dimly the perception of 
something through it all of real truth and vitality, and 
that made its hold upon him the more pitiless. Certainly 
he had gained a new insight into the New Testament Scrip- 
tures. He had a sense of a vivid, consecutive, and impas- 
sioned history, such as he had never before suspected, in 
those pages. Darkly there shone, through these wreathing 
mists of the young skeptic’s talk, the image of a primitive 
church, upon whose topmost spire was lifted into the light 
of heaven the Cross. 

His spirit demanded, though his intellect could not shape 
the demand, an adequare and central motive. He gained 


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from that hour a purpose with which to read Scripture with 
interest, if nothing more. He was approaching the Church 
from the pure heathen stand-point; and, like the earnest 
heathen of old, a voice within, faintly heard, hardly under- 
stood, was calling him. 

They sat late into tlie night; but when Maurice went to 
his bed-chamber he grasped, almost instinctively, his prayer- 
book. He opened to the Second Sunday in Advent, and 
his eye fell upon that collect. He read it slowly and reve- 
rently, half aloud ; and then — as one under the fast gather- 
ing spell of coming illness struggles against it — said, firmly, 
“ I will believe, I do believe,” and turned the page and read 
the Apostles’ Creed. It seemed to calm him and relieve 
him, he could hardly 'tell how or why, and he slept quietly. 

The next day they went up to Naples together, and 
Maurice parted with Langdon, who embarked in the steamer 
for Malta, while he himself, that same afternoon, took the 
diligence for Rome. 

His first attempt at a solution of this new class of difficul- 
ties was to look for Gardiner. He was no longer in Rome. 
He found, indeed, Mrs. Gardiner and Miss He Forest there 
still, but they could give him no hope of meeting with their 
relative. A vacancy had occurred at Florence in the 
English Church, and Gardiner, considering the services of 
Passion Week too important to be lost, had consented to 
give up the splendid pageants of Rome, in order that he 
might afford to a score of tourists and a few permanent 
residents in Florence, the services of the Church. 

Then he went to call on the AVinrows. Ellen was out 
with her brother. Then, restless and perplexed, he went 
once more to the Church of the Gesu. He inquired for 

Father AY , the American priest. He was absent at 

Frascati, where was a sick countryman. So he went home, 
and did what he might have known was the only way for 
him. He undertook to study out the matter for himself. 
It was a good thing for him to do. He gained at least 
something like a knowledge of the unity of the New Testa- 
ment plan. Slowly and very imperfectly, but still with a 
great awakening power, he convinced himself that no such 
mere worldly idea lay beneath the New Testament history 
as Langdon had set forth. But traces of a church began 
to show themselves, — only, unfortunately, he was but too 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


105 


slightly acquainted with the real points at issue to see how 
the Scriptures bore upon them. Only one thing came 
clearly out, and that was the independence of the different 
books, both in point of date as well as in composition. He 
noted a good many matters for future study; and then, after 
a week so spent, he turned to that gorgeous succession of 
ceremonies which begin with Palm Sunday, and end with 
the Easter fireworks. 


CHAPTER X. 


B ryan assisted at the services of Holy Week in the 
midst of a jam and crowd of tourists which was not at 
all edifying. He saw the indefatigable English charge from 
the foot-washing of the pilgrims to the feeding, breaking 
through in a dozen places the line of Papal soldiery. One 
burly Briton in a Windsor uniform actually used a couple 
of ladies, as did his ancestry the revolving scythes on their 
chariot-wheels, sweeping from their unhappy little legs the 
astonished military, and through the breach so made poured 
the irresistible sight-seers. What little of religious idea 
was left in the midst of these elaborate performances was 
effectually extinguished by the noise and bustle and irrever- 
ence of the gathered tourists, — most of them members of a 
Church that at that very season was in sadness and solemn 
humiliation commemorating the most important events in 
the Lord’s life. 

Easter Sunday dawned clear and bright. Maurice would 
have gone to church with Miss AV inrow, but he wished to 
see the blessing of the people in the great piazza before St. 
Peter’s. So he witnessed High Mass, and tried hard to un- 
derstand something about it, and then took his place in the 
shadow of the colonnade and waited. At high noon there 
appeared upon the balcony the venerable figure of Rome’s 
latest, perhaps last Patriarch-Bishop, and every head was 
uncovered. The French army of occupation and the Roman 
troops of the line were drawn up in front. As the Pope 
appeared, the officer in command waved his sword, which 
flashed brightly in the sunlight, and with the marvellous 
precision of military movement, every musket was grounded, 
every knee bent. That alone would have made the specta- 
cle magnificent; and coupled with the thought of the 
powers of war submitted to the authority of the religion of 


BllYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


107 


peace, it became thrilling. Perfect stillness reigned in all 
the vast area, so that even at the elevation of the balcony 
the Pontiff’s voice was distinctly audible. Maurice may 
yet learn to pronounce himself the Apostolic benediction, 
but he can hardly in life forget that moment of intense 
emotion. One impression was clear amid the tumult of his 
thoughts, that he must in some way find admission into the 
bosom of the Christian Church. He was further off than 
ever from becoming a Romanist, — he had no definite views 
as yet, — the old self-sustaining, independent instinct of Uni- 
tarianism was still unsubdued; but this his parting from 
Rome was, unconsciously to himself, the beginning of a 
new life. From Christmas to Easter he had undergone a 
very important change. His habit of looking at religious 
subjects was materially, radically altered. He came again 
to that same square that evening, and saw one by one the 
long threads of light from innumerable lanterns mark out 
the \\\\o\q fagade of the huge church, until, as the twilight 
deepened, it stood a glowing skeleton of silvery fires. Then 
suddenly a torch soared like a star aloft to the top of the 
cross, and everywhere the building seemed to become a sea 
of tossing flames. The dome became transformed into the 
likeness of the triple crown, and the former illumination 
paled as the glow-worm spark beneath the glare of a meteor. 
Nothing in the whole repertoire of Rome’s melodrama of 
devotion is so superb as this. To be sure, twenty lives are 
annually risked, and, as the alternative, daring criminals 
purchase pardon and freedom for new trespass for their 
night’s work. This the traveller does not see — he only 
enjoys and is amazed. 

Easter Monday Maurice staid for the fireworks on the 
Pincian Hill, — another superb spectacle, — ending with the 
girandole, or flight of thirty thousand rockets at once into 
the air.* 

The next morning before daylight he was on his way to 
Civita Vecchia. From thence his journey was as rapid as 
he could make it, — through France, only pausing a night 
in Paris to rest, and after a weary week he found himself in 
London late Saturday night. The next Sunday he went to 

•=^The author is not responsible for the statistics of this affain It is 
mid the rockets are thirty thousand, and it certainly looks as if there 
were that number. 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER 


the Abbey in the morning, where the choral service happened 
to be performed very shabbily, and a very indifferent sermon 
was drawled out to a thin congregation, — a state of things 
which, in this present year of grace, would be found mar- 
vellously changed for the better. In the afternoon he 
somehow found his way to the new and elegant Irvingite 
church, where he witnessed a splendor and solemnity of 
ritual that very much moved him, and in the evening went 
to the respectable old St. James’, Piccadilly, where he heard 
a most capital sermon. The face of the preacher was 
familiar, and after a time it came to him where he had seen 
it before. It was the preacher of Ash- Wednesday at 
Rome. 

“Who was it preached?” said Maurice to a pew-opener as 
he passed out. 

“That was our Rector, sir, the Rev. Mr. K ; he al- 

ways preaches Sunday nights,” was the answer given with 
a tone of suppressed pride. 

Monday morning Maurice was busy in procuring various 
little matters for his voyage. He decided to leave most of 
his luggage in London, and only to take what he needed, — 
meaning to return after a month or two. He went to 
C ’s well-known book-store in the Strand, and was ask- 

ing for any Irvingite publications they might have, when a 
hand was laid upon his shoulder. He turned and met a 
Cambridge friend, a Unitarian minister of some eminence, 
who had been temporarily filling a post in the Divinity 
School during Bryan’s college days, and, being a very 
genial, warm-hearted man, had often dropped into the 
young senior’s rooms to chat over literary matters. He of 
course asked Maurice concerning his plans. Maurice was 

going to Oxford the next day. Mr. D proposed to 

accompany him. 

“Well, my real object,” said Bryan, “is not Oxford — 
I’ve seen that — but an Oxford man, to whom I have 
letters.” 

“ Oh, never mind that : it is very little use taking letters 
to these Englishmen ; but you’ll have time enough for him 
and me too. I have some letters, and we can make a joint 
business.” 

Maurice was tired of solitary travel, as any man will be 
after a week of it, and was easily persuaded. So Tuesday 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


109 


evening found them sitting at dinner at the “Mitre,” that 
ancient and Orthodox hostelry, where they partook of their 
refreshment under the eye of a party semi-clerical in attire 
and stately enough for a Bishop — whom the Kev. Mr. 

D frankly confessed to Maurice afterward he could not 

bring himself to regard as a waiter. 

The next day they sallied forth to present their letters. 
Maurice’s was to a Fellow of Oriel, the Kev. — — . He 
was received with great courtesy ; but jusji..as' the English- 
man was about to cast the letter by,' a sentence in it ap- 
peared to arrest his attention. “ Excuse me a moment,” 
he said, and read the whole over again very carefully, evi- 
dently discovering that this was no formal letter of intro- 
duction. The first question he asked was: “How long 
have you to stay ?” 

“ I must be in Liverpool Friday night; unexpected busi- 
ness calls me to America ; but I return in the autumn, I 
hope.” 

“ Dear, dear, how unfortunate ! Gardiner writes me as 
only he could write, for he knows that his lightest wish 
would be law with me, and now it is out of my power to do 
what he wants done. What I had proposed, for he has 
written me from Florence about you, was to take you out 
to my curacy as my guest for six weeks or so. Then we 
could go over the whole matter seriously. I am engaged 
now almost every hour till next Sunday, for really I did 
not look for you quite so soon, and have been making it my 
business to get my work out of the way so as to be ready 
for you. I can take you to dine in Hall, and get a friend 
to show you the lions and all that ; but as for the other 
matter, it would be folly to begin. I am sorry, so sorry ; I 
never was so sorry for anything in all my life. You 
couldn’t now, could you, manage to put off your return?” 
He looked in Maurice’s face with a longing look of en- 
treaty, as if he and not the young American were the 
obliged party. 

Maurice pondered a moment, and then said — “No; it is 
a friend’s business which calls me; and it is connected with 
a law affair, a will, which I must prove in the courts per- 
sonally.” 

“Very well, then, we’ll make Oxford pleasant to you 
low. You’ll dine with me to-day, and breakfast with me 


10 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


to-morrow. Come to cliapel at five, and then we’ll go to 
Hall together. Now, if you will excuse me, I must be off. 
You had best visit some of the colleges to-day. I’ll just 
take you now and put you in a friend’s hands for that you 
know.” 

So Maurice was given over to the charming hospitalities 
of Oxford, and enjoyed his three days to the full, but got 
no opportunity to make the inquiries he wished. On the 
contrary, he did see something of the very opposite set, to 
whom I) ’s letters introduced him, and heard consider- 

able of very unsettling “ Broad Church ” talk. He got the 
impression that there w^as a large party in the English 
Establishment which w'as chafing at the restraints of the 
Articles and inclined to interpret Scripture very laxly, and 
he could not help feeling that the latitude of construction 
these men claimed for their owm vows was a good deal akin 
to that Jesuit casuistry he had heard at Kome. 

Then the constant reference to the power of Parliament 
struck him unpleasantly. He had heard the Anglican 
Church called a State Church in his controversial studies 
at Rome, and here he found its members advocating a still 
wider authority of the civil power. 

The brief days w^ere soon over, however. He found him- 
self once more at the Waterloo Arms in Liverpool, that 
quaint and comfortable resting-place of the just-landed, that 
bustling dreary abode of those who are to set sail on the 
morrow ; and the next morning, bright and early, he was 
on board the tug going alongside the magnificent American 
steamer Mystic, the swiftest and most comfortable of those 
unrivalled vessels that for a season outsped the fleetest 
keels of Great Britain. As he stepped aboard, his hand 
was grasped wdth a hearty shake, and in a semi-naval uni- 
form Stuart stood before him. It w'as a glad surprise; 
and still another was in store as the boat came off again, 
and the Winrows — father, mother, and daughter — were 
among the passengers. 

The second night out was a little rough, and Maurice was 
glad to forsake the cold, wet deck for Stuart’s cheery little 
state-room. It was his watch below, and the young officer, 
throwing off his monkey-jacket and cap as he came in, gave 
Maurice a hearty welcome. He then returned to Maurice 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


Ill 


Gardiner’s gift, the prayer-book loaned him, -with many 
thanks. 

“Do you know that has taught me my duty?” he said, 
as he laid it on the table between them. “ And I’ve done 
it, too, as I said I would. I found that the Bishop of 
Chester was to confirm this last week, in his own cathedral. 
So I got leave and ran down to Chester ; and a friend of 
mine, an English parson, had me presented; and I’ve been 
confirmed and taken the Sacrament, and I feel twice the 
man I was before. I wish you had been with me. Now, 
if anything goes wrong, I can stick to my duty without 
flinching. You see every true sailor may have some day 
to go with his ship, and I want to have something to keep 
me true and brave w hen the last order comes.” 

Maurice gave a weary sigh. “I am more adrift than 
ever,” he said, “ but my doubts must not trouble you. 
When I get home, I mean to have the matter out, but here 
on board ship one cannot.” 

Curiously enough, he had been looking forward to just 
this time in which to go over his religious troubles at 
leisure, and when it came, he w’as shirking the question 
most of all. He looked half enviously at Stuart, and 
then nervously turned the subject, nor did he speak of it 
again. 

It w'as just the same wdth Miss Winrow, with whom he 
w'as constantly meeting and talking whenever her mother’s 
sea-sickness permitted the daughter to leave her. He never 
could bring himself to talk with her upon those former 
topics, and when she led tow'ard them, he turned the subject 
adroitly. This feeling of avoidance deepened as a more 
personal interest sprang up between them. He gave him- 
self up to the business of pleasing her, and, as is the case 
the world over, “ Semper uhique et cum omnibus,” he more 
and more pleased himself. Still, though talking of pictures 
and travels and the sights of all sorts which day by day 
were left further behind below the eastern horizon, ever 
and anon a reference would be made to the time of their 
acquaintanceship. But her advances were not met. Under 
the influence of a new feeling, not yet strong enough to 
require the aid of the celestial to guide the steps of the 
terrestrial love, his restlessness of mind was subsiding, and 
bis search after things divine seemed to lose its interest. 


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The American atmosphere seemed to be, -with the flag 
above his head, once more claiming his allegiance to prac- 
tical thoughts and things. He was going back to New 
England scenes and ideas. As the idea of a possible love 
for Ellen Winrow rose to tangible reality in his mind, the 
notion of returning at once to Europe lost its hold. He 
would go back to Cambridge and study law or general 
literature, and if this came to anything, he said to himself, 
with a light flush coming to his cheek as he sat at night in 
his state-room, he might make a new' eflbrt. He could take 
his wdfe’s church as a matter of course, as other men did, 
without being a member of it. Somehow this compromis- 
ing way of having the question settled for him was very 
alluring. Only, after all, nothing w'as decided yet. It 
was pleasant to enjoy these talks upon the deck, and the 
passing day-dream ; meanwhile, vogue la galere — he w'ould 
see w'here it ended ; and at the worst, if he should be 
mistaken either in his owm mind or in hers, why, he could 
go to Europe again, and gratify his old longing for the 
East and for the desert life. 

“ A boy’s will is the wind’s will, 

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” 

On the eighth day of the passage, the Mystic ran into the 
dense fogs which hang along the Banks. The steamer’s 
speed was not slackened. They dashed along under the 
thick w’eltering cloud, shut in from sea and sky within their 
little moving circle amid the seas. There is something 
peculiarly dreary in this. Everything drips, the decks are 
wet, the cabin damp, the air chill as in a vault, and the 
eye obliged to rest inboard for every object save a few feet 
of sullen waves. Maurice rose early from the dinner-table 
that day, and went forward to the smoke-stack on the upper 
or spar-deck, where, in the w’arm lee of that huge column, 
was the only comfortable place to be found. He was look- 
ing abstractedly over the lee bow, the steamer then heading 
west by south, when all at once the fog seemed to gather in 
one particular spot just ahead, and he caught the glimpse 
of a driving sail. In the same moment a warning shout 
came from the seaman at the Mystic’s bow — “ Starboard 
your helm — starboard ha-a-ard !” as there came into view 
the head sails of a ship close-hauled. Quicker than it is 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


113 


possible to write this sentence, the bowsprit of the stranger 
crashed upon the starboard bow of the Mystit;, and with 
sails all shaking, and with a wild cry of terror in sorae 
foreign tongue coming up from her deck, she swung into 
view abeam ; then, as the way upon the Mystic carried her 
irresistibly ahead, fell off again into the gloom — but not 
before she was seen to be a large propeller, her bowsprit a 
shattered stump, with a mass of tangled rigging fallen across 
her bows, her foretop-gallant mast gone over to leeward, and 
every appearance of a fearful wreck upon her, as the result 
of the collision. The captain of the Mystic was instantly 
on deck, and in a brief moment the steam was shut off and 
a boat manned and lowered, pulling in the direction of the 
stranger. Unconscious of any injury to his own craft, he 
was taking every measure to rescue the imperilled crew of 
the other ship. The faint toll of her bell came through 
the fog in answer to the whistle of the Mystic, then the dim 
flash and muffled explosion of a gun. One man had clam- 
bered on board the Mystic in the moment of collision — a 
frightened Frenchman, who, in broken English, gave the 
name of his vessel (a screw steamer out of St. John’s), and 
declared that she was in a sinking condition. The captain 
was just ordering another boat lowered, and the excited 
passengers were straining their eyes into the fog to catch a 
glimpse of the other vessel, when Stuart, whose station was 
on the forecastle of the Mystic, was hurriedly addressed by 
one of the watch. He came aft at once, and whispered to 
his commander with a very grave face, just as a terrified 
waiter rushed up from below% exclaiming, “ The steamer is 
sinking.” Wild confusion followed. The first mate was 
absent with the boat already lowered, and the crew missed 
the accustomed authority. Two of the junior officers were 
new to the ship. Orders were hastily given and counter- 
manded. Maurice hurried to his state-room, took his money 
and all Frank’s papers, and secured them about him, with 
such trifies as he most wished to preserve; and then, seeing 
Frank’s prayer-book, thrust it into his bosom beside the one 
which Gardiner had given him, which he had in his pocket. 
Then he returned on deck to a little group of ladies who 
were asking anxious questions, and did his best to calm 
them. Stuart, looking very serious, was at his post, clearing 
away the small brass gun which the steamer carried. The 


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sharp explosion followed, startling everyone. Sobs, cries, and 
wild prayers were heard. 

Bryan hastily threw himself amid a group of excited 
male passengers, and urged every man to make an effort for 
their safety. The captain appeared upon the quarter-deck 
calm and collected, and ordered the life-boats and quarter- 
boats lowered. The crew, obedient to the instinct of disci- 
pline, placed themselves at the falls, and the remaining 
boats were safely in the water when a frantic rush of Avaiters, 
firemen, and engineers from below was made. In vain the 
officers tried to control them. The divided authority then 
prevailing in the Atlantic steam service bore its fatal fruits. 
Maurice, with others of the more self-possessed passengers, 
endeavored to stem the torrent. It was useless. The 
frightened crowd rushed into the boats ; capsizing one, 
Avhich filled instantly, and was swept under the steamer’s 
counter ; and crowding the others to the water’s edge, pulled 
hastily aAvay from the steamer now momentarily settling in 
the water. Stuart gave a grim smile. The captain, Avho 
was faithful to the last, Avent forAvard to make one more 
vain attempt to get a sail over the boAV which should stop 
the leak. The calm of despair settled upon those Avho 
remained on board. Stuart continued to load and fire his 
gun, in the faint chance of attracting a passing sail to their 
rescue. In the intervals of this duty he got a chance to 
exchange a word Avith Maurice. 

‘‘We’ve not half an hour more to float. Help to cut the 
lashings of these light spare spars, and start the doors from 
the state-rooms — everything that Avill float. Those Avho can 
swim may have a chance. I go Avith the ship. Jones,” 
said he to one of the creAv, “you and Waters get a couple 
of axes and get the roof of this house on deck clear ; it Avill 
make a raft for some of you.” The men obeyed, and 
Avorked desperately. But the copper fastenings and bolts 
of the splendidly built steamer defied their efforts. Stuart 
also directed Maurice to unhook and cast loose the guys of 
the spanker-boom, and had the standing gaft lowered and 
cut clear. Some of the men had got doAvn the foretop- 
gallant yard and rested it across the forward deck. Nothing 
more could be done. 

Maurice turned to Miss Winrow, Avho, Avith lier father 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


115 


and mother, were sitting quietly on the edge of the cabin 
skylight. 

“We are in God’s hand,” was all he could utter. 

“We are in God’s hand,” she replied, “and He will take 
us to Himself. I did not think to die so young, but father 
and motlier are with me, and I pray God that he may yet 
save you to His service. Something tells me He will. Good- 
bye, and do not forget me then.” 

“Never, if I live, but I would rather die with you. Miss 
Winrow, — Ellen,” he said in a sudden agony at the thought 
of separation, “what can life be to me without you?” 

“Hush!” she said, “hush, not now! I cannot tell what 
might have been,” and a sweet pure look came over her 
young face. “I have thought of you, for we girls see when 
we are thought of by others, that, if it pleased Heaven to 
let us be one, I could have been very happy : but we must 
not speak of these things now. I” — 

A wild, hoarse cry rang from the seamen on the bow as 
the Mystic gave a sickening lurch beneath them. 

“Father, mother, dear — ” she cried, as every one on the 
decks started to their feet. Maurice long remembered see- 
ing — as though he saw it not, for he had then no thought 
save for Ellen Winrow — Stuart calmly running out his gun 
once more and applying the loggerhead to the touchhole. 
The explosion was in the midst of blinding spray, just as a 
wave broke upon the gunwale of the steamer and swept 
across the deck, driving the groups resistlessly asunder. 
Bryan was borne off his feet. Flinging his arms out in- 
stinctively, he struck the boom he had cut loose from its 
fasts and clung to it with the simple instinct of self-preser- 
vation. The waters closed over them, and both spar and 
man went down in the mighty indraught of the sinking 
steamer. 

It seemed ages, though it was but a few moments, when 
the spar rose again to the surface. He shook the water 
from his face, drew a long breath, and gazed about him. 
Only a few fragments of wreck were floating here and there. 
There were no signs of the friends he had parted with. The 
captain was upon a piece of the paddle-box at a little dis- 
tance ; and as he rose upon a wave, he thought he saw one 
or two more. A fathom or two of the signal halyards were 
still attached to the boom-end, and Maurice worked along 


IIG 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


the spar till he secured them and lashed himself securely. 
Night was fast coming on, and though once or twice he 
heard voices and the dash of oars, he called in vain. The 
niate had returned with his boat and was picking up the 
surviving few, but Maurice was not seen ; and soon the 
sullen wash of the waves was the only sound heard by him. 
lie struggled to keep his consciousness. He thought of 
many things, of the words of the preacher of Ash- Wednes- 
day, now so singularly illustrating his own case. All 
through the night he heard sounds of bells and’ guns and 
voices calling him, but could not tell whether these were 
the cheats of his own brain or realities. Then he had a 
faint recollection of the rolling away of the fog and a clear 
sky at dawn, into which the sun rose, which was the last 
remembered incident. He hung helplessly in the lashings, 
his head luckily clear of the water. When he awoke, he 
was in a berth. At first he thought the whole a dream, and 
that he was still on board the Mystic; but there was no jar 
of machinery, only the light dancing motion of a small 
craft; and the half-conscious wandering glance that he gave 
showed him the little cabin into which he looked was not 
his state-room. A rough-looking, gray-haired, gray-bearded 
man was sitting watching him. 

“ The Lord’s name be praised !” Maurice heard him say. 
Then something was put to his lips of which he drank me- 
chanically, and sank away into sleep again. When he 
roused again, he found himself weak, but refreshed. 

“Where am I?” he asked in a feeble voice. 

“Safe aboard the Eliza Jane, fishing-schooner of Marble- 
head. Don’t talk now, but eat a bit, and then we’ll get you 
on deck and hear about it.” 

An hour later Maurice was on deck. The sun was low 
in the western horizon. Maurice looked into the binnacle, 
and saw which way the vessel was heading. She was a little 
schooner of less than a hundred tons, with everything set 
that would draw, and dashing merrily toward the American 
coast. The old man stood at the tiller, steering by the 
mere swaying of his tall body against the helm, as it seemed. 
One or two wondering faces of young men were turned 
toward them, but no questions were asked. Two more 
young men were busy forward. 

“Well, my lad, and how d’ye feel now? You’re looking 


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117 


a bit more rugged,” said the skipper. “ When ^ve picked 
you up this morning, there was less life in you than there is 
now. Bless His holy name for that. You were lashed to 
a spar that to my eye had the look of a spanker-boom, and 
the lashings we cut you loose from was part of an ensign 
halyard I sh’d jedge. What has happened? You weren’t 
the only one adrift when that spar went overboard ?” 

Maurice told his story briefly. Exclamations of wonder 
and pity burst from the lips of his hearers. Maurice begged 
them to put back and try to rescue some others. 

“We’ve done that, my lad, a’ready. We stood on the 
starboard tack a good two hours after we picked you up, 
and saw plenty of floating wrack ; a boat, — one of these 
new-fashioned iron life-boats, — bottom up, but no living 
thing except yourself; and if God Almighty hadn’t sent 
back the breath o’ life into you, it’s little we couhl have 
done. Bless His Holy Name ! Amen !” said the captain. 

“ The steamer Mystic; two hun’erd lives lost! The Lord’s 
ways are unsarchable.” 

Maurice was too weak and excited to talk much ; and the 
kind old skipper made him lie down on the deck, and 
covered him with a monkey-jacket. And there he lay, 
neither waking nor sleeping, nor able to think much, but 
resting, and slowly struggling back into strength. 

When night fell, they made him go below, and, after 
some supper, helped him to undress and turn in, as tenderly 
as if he had been a child. And then the old captain, 
evidently doing what he had done daily for years, took a 
well-worn Bible, and worked slowly through a chapter, one 
of the Psalms; and then knelt by Maurice’s berth-side and 
offered up a prayer of thanksgiving, not forgetting in it a 
petition “ for them poor souls o’ Thine yet mebbye floating 
upon the lone waters ; and that, if it was Thy will, those 
whom Thou hast so suddenly called to their account was 
ready when the time come.” So Maurice slept once more. 

The next morning found him all himself again. When 
he got on deck, he found the old man ready to talk with 
him. One of the crew was set to steer, and another was 
acting as cook; and there was not much else to be done 
about the little craft, which was still skimming homewards. 

“Excuse my asking,” said the old man, as they sat 
together on the sunny lee of the companion-way, while 


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lie puffed away at the blackened stump of a pipe, — “ but 
have you known what it is to get religion ? Arter such a 
marvellous goodness of the Lord’s showing, surely He has 
work for you in this life.” 

Maurice a month ago would have turned aside the ques- 
tion, but he could not here. 

“I don’t know',” he replied, thoughtfully. ‘‘I do feel 
very serious and very grateful ; and I was thinking last 
niffht, if I got home, I w'ould give myself to His service — if 
I could find how'.” 

“Well, let an old man tell you, sir. You’re college 
la’arnt, I guess, and such as you can do a sight o’ good if 
you will. I know’d He called poor fishermen, like me, to 
be fishers of men ; but he called also Matthew that w'as at 
the receipt of custom, and Luke that was a physician, and 
Paul, he that w'as laarned in all the laarning of the world ; 
and now has n’t He called you, in saving you out of the 
great deep? 1 ha’n’t a hard thought agin Him for making 
me what I be — a rough fisherman of the Banks ; but if I’d 
had my w'ay when I was young like you, I’d have gone to 
college and been a preacher o’ righteousness and the blessed 
Gospel. It wa’ant to be, and that’s why I’m here now'. 
But when I sat w'atching you breathe just and no more, — 
— Steady, my son — steady. The wind’s more out of the 
nothe of east and heading us a little. Keep her full-and- 
bye. For’ard there, just trim the jib-sheet a little flatter. 
Well, the jib-sheet, w'ell, all! — As I w'as a-w^atching you, 
the thought come to me, like as ’t were a call from God’s 
voice a-speaking in me, to bid you go and preach the Gos- 
pel. For it kinder seemed to say to me,” and here the 
rough features w'orked and a strange yearning look came 
into his face, “that here W'as the chance I’d been longing 
fiu' all my life. I lost a boy, might be like you he W'ould 
be now, whom I ahvays meant to make a minister of, — and 
many’s the dollar I’ve laid up for him, — but he took sick 
and died w'hen I w'as on a vy’ge to Canton : they said some 
of them it was studying too hard. But I never had no 
other. These is my sister’s sons ; but they ’re like me, 
Bank fishermen, — good boys and steady enough, but just 
made for the sea. But seein’ you, I feel as if God had give 
me a life wdien I picked you up ; for He sent me to do it. 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 

[’ll tell you now how it was, if you won’t think it an old 
fellow’s yarn ; for it’s the living truth before the Lord. 

“The day before we picked you up, we had the wind 
blowing fresh from the west’ard about two pints nothe of 
west, so that we were beating up against it close-hauled. 
AYe were then on the edge of the fog-bank, and our best 
course was, plain as day, to keep on the larboard tack and 
head southerly, — especially as the wind was hauling and 
giving us a chance to lay a better course every minute. 
Any child could see what was to be done, yet I wa’an’t 
easy in my mind and couldn’t get easy, do what I liked, 
and by-and-by I just put the helm down and told the boys 
we’d go about. ‘ Why, father,’ says rny nephew Tom there, 
— he’s my sister’s son, but his father was lost at sea when 
he was little, and the boys mostly call me father, — ‘why 
father,’ says he, ‘that tack will knock us two pints off our 
course and take us into the fog beside.’ I knowed it as 
well as he did, but I just give any kind of an answer that 
he’d see afore we was done, and then I stuck her down to 
the starboard tack, come what would. I could see the 
boys look at me as if they couldn’t make out what I was 
at, and twice I got ashamed of myself for being so super- 
stitious like, and then I went about, but I couldn’t feel 
easy, and the third time I says to myself, ‘There’s some- 
thing in this. I haven’t this load off my mind for nothing;’ 
and then I just gave no thought about it. Now I know, 
sitting here by you, who never came aboard us when we 
sailed out of port, what it was for that I felt so, and I be- 
lieve, just as sure as I believe in Him, that the Lord’s got 
work for you to do.” He paused a moment and then said, 
— “Now I’ve got one favor to ask you, and I can ask a 
favor after bringing you back from the gates o’ death into 
life, as you may say, by God’s blessing. You ain’t got re- 
ligion yet. I can tell that, for them that has knows; but 
just you pray for it to come, and don’t give up praying till 
it does come; and don’t you mind my praying for you, — 
for I must and shall, — for you’re my son that the Lord’s 
gi’en me back.” He I’ose up from off the deck and walked 
forward, leaving Maurice deeply moved. 

The young man slipped quietly below into the silent little 
cabin, and with bowed head and bended knees prayed long 
and fervently. Light seemed to come to him. He had 


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been sorroAviiig in his heart for his lost love, though the 
knowedge and the loss had come almost in the same 
2noment. The selfishness of his old life fell off from him 
all at once. In broken, scarce formed thoughts, without a 
definite creed, with little idea how practically it was to 
come about, he pledged himself to God, and feeling the 
sense of a personal Saviour, he vowed to serve Him, en- 
treating Him to be merciful and to forgive his past sins, and 
to take him as His disciple. 

When he returned to the deck and his eyes met the gaze 
of the old seaman, it was with a look that told all. 

“God be praised! it has come to you,” said the old 
skipper, “I know it. You don’t need to tell me, for we 
mightn’t understand each other; but I see it. And now 
Eliza Jane, you huzzy!” cried he, slapping his hand upon 
the low rail, “let’s see you w^alk your sw'eetest, for we must 
sight Cape Ann lights by sundown. 

“It’s blowing freshish, Tom, but I guess we can stand 
getting the staysail on her; if it goes, why it’s only a hal- 
yard parted or a main-topmast sprung. Get it up, you and 
’Lish, and bend on that new halyard out of the after-port 
locker.” 

Under the added sail the little craft fairly sprang from 
sea to sea, and as the evening damp thickened the canvass, 
every sail stood like a board. The slender topmast buckled 
like whalebone, and the lee-shrouds slackened into long 
bights, but everything held; and as the darkness came 
down upon the waters, the keen eye of the mariner caught 
the well-known gleam of the light-house. “Ease her off, 
my son, a half pint; let the main sheet draw a little!” And 
so at racing speed, with the spray flying over the sharp 
bow, and a long w\ake of foam seething astern, they drew 
near the dim shadowy outline of the coast, and when the 
full moon rose red and round out of the east, they made 
out the rocky headlands of Marblehead harbor, and by 
midnight were gliding slowly to their anchorage before the 
slumbering village. With the dawning, Maurice was on 
the shore, and bidding a hearty good-bye to his preservers, 
and forcing upon them some keepsakes from the little 
trifles of jewelry he had been able to save, was on his way 
to Salem and the railroad to Boston. 


CHAPTER XI. 

T he reader must suppose himself again advanced over a 
space of several weeks. The scene is now Xahant, and 
two gentlemen are sitting in the twilight upon the rocks in 
front of the hotel, watching a young man who slowly strolls 
away from them along the cliffs in the direction of the 
Spouting Horn. 

“ Well, Professor,” began the elder of the two, a rather 
portly, handsome man, somewhat florid in complexion and 
ministerial in attire — “ well. Professor, what do you think 
of our young friend there — will he do ?” 

“He must do,” was the reply. “We want something 
decent in the Divinity School terribly. The last lot were 
regular sticks — the fag-end of their class in college. The 
set before were men at whom even the Faculty looked 
queer — so dreadfully erratic. I don’t think it wise to draw 
the line too narrowly, of course, but Parkerism is just 
swamping the school.” 

“ Young Maurice isn’t in that way at all, I should say.” 

“ Oh, no ; quite the reverse. In fact, there is where the 
trouble lies. He is too orthodox by half, I fear. He had 
a notion of going to the Episcopal Seminary in New York, 
if there is such a thing — only I doubt if he knew how to 

set about it — but he was going to consult Dr. , the 

Puseyite parson at St. Polycarp’s. That would never have 
done ; he would have been drawn in in a moment ; but I 
got him, instead, an interview with Swivel, who is half 
minded to turn Presbyterian himself. It succeeded charm- 
ingly. Swivel insisted, just as I knew he would, that ulti-a- 
Calvinism was the real teaching of the Thirty-nine Articles, 
and that, you see, was more than our young friend could 
swallow.” 


11 


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“ Very good ; but how did you know that Swivel would 
say that?” 

“ Oh, I knew by what he said to me when I ” — He 
stopped, blushed, stammered, and then, seeing himself in 
for it, said, “ I may as well be frank : I did think of the 
same thing a year or so since myself, and so you see I was 
pretty sure what Swivel would say. Then I caught him on 
the rebound. I showed him that Unitarianism, true Uni- 
tarianism, only refused to define the nature of the Saviour 
and his relation to the Father ; that we, in reverence for 
that relation, shrank from the Episcopalian dogmatism, 
which sought to fix it. I said — I am afraid I went pretty 
far there — that we did not exclude them from sharing the 
Christian faith — only forbade them to exclude others ; that 
we rested upon the simple terms of Scripture. Then I 
talked to him of the Church of the Future; how, when 
relieved from all these old-world trammels, it would grow 
to possess all liturgies and ordinances and churches, unre- 
stricted by canons and rubrics and conventions. I thought 
I was sure of him, only he asked me quietly if I knew the 
difference between a canon and a rubric. I said ‘ Of 
course,’ but did not venture to state it. Then I took him 
to the Convention, the Episcopal Convention, you know. 
It was a bold stroke; but, as luck would have it, the Bishop 
was not in the chair, and a very undignified squabble was 
going on between the pressing officer and one of the bre- 
thren. What with this ailcl with that I got my lamb out 
of the lion’s mouth, I thinks 

“ Yes, yes; but Professor, why take all that trouble? If 
he finds out how you have managed, you will lose him alto- 
gether ; and, besides that, what do you want of any one who 
has to be kept in the dark to prevent him from turning 
orthodox ?” 

“ Well, I am not sure, I don’t believe pretty much as he 
does; and then I was determined to keep him out of the 
hands of these Episcopalians. They are the dog in the 
manger. They won’t let anybody else belong to the Church 
Catholic, and they won’t join it themselves. We could 
keep on terms with all the other bodies, by dropping the 
name Unitarian, but there they stick with their precious 
prayer-book, right in the way. Our people will not swallow 
that, with its Litany and Trinity Sunday and Nicene Creed. 


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123 


\yhat I said about the Churcli of the Future I do hold to, 
and I tliink it can be done; we can use the Episcopal polity 
quite as well as the Methodists, and who is to stop us from 
using any liturgies we like, only we must not be crowded 
on the creeds. The tide is setting that way just now, and 
if we can only borrow their boat, weTl leave them high and 
dry on the shore.” 

“Well done, Professor; tell it not in Gath, however,” said 
the other, with a laugh. 

“No, no! You mistake me; I am serious. You have 
no idea how the Divinity School has drifted since you and 
I were graduated there. While I have been west, every- 
thing has changed ; and before I go back to Titus to my 
professorship, I intend to recruit a few young men of the 
right sort. The set there now are either stupid as codfish, 
or else fellows whose whole study is to pull the Bible to 
pieces, and to ridicule it, — sentimental, lazy chaps, who 
take to the ministry as a pretty profession. If we can only 
get a few young men with reverence and ability combined, 
we can make a movement. If not, let me tell you that in 
thirty years or so from now, when you and I are gone, 
Unitarianism will be dead and buried.” 

“Seriously, my dear old chum, if that be the case, why 
try to save it? I do not hold with you. I love it, for it 
delivered me out of the bonds of a dead Calvinism ; it gave 
me life in the glorious liberty of the Gospel. It gave me a 
living and loving friend in Jesus, 'instead of a mere abstract 
middle-term in the problem of man reconciled or atoned 
with God. I do not care, as you say, about the ancient 
creeds. I can take them well enough, if I may take them 
my own way, but into that horrible prison house of Trinita- 
rian ism I will not go.” 

“That is just what I am trying to save us from. Park- 
erism is killing us inch by inch, and we shall be forced 
back into the old paths, unless we can put that down. That 
is why I make such an effort to get young men like this Mr. 
Maurice.” 

“And how have you succeeded?” 

“As far as this. He has promised to go to Cambridge. 
I have arranged for him that he shall enter as of the second 
year, — he did read there six weeks after leaving college, — • 
and that will bring him tlirougli a year from next June. 


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That weighed with him. He is terribly impatient for ac- 
tion. I told you his history this morning, you know. That 
has left him very restless, and I think a little melancholy, 
as well it might. Moreover, he is tied up in this country 
for a year by some law matters, in which he is a witness for 
a friend of his who died in Koine.” 

“You think then, that” — 

“ Hush, here he comes.” 

Maurice,. looking older and paler, through the indescriba- 
ble impress of a great grief, came up to them. 

“ I have decided, sir. If the Church of my fathers can 
be a church ; if she can unite the two things I love — law 
and liberty — I will stand by her. I have been thinking 
over what you said about our Church acting as the recon- 
ciler of a divided Christendom — ready to give up Congre- 
gationalism and Puritan forms to the Episcopalian, and 
conceding to the Orthodox original sin, and to the Methodist 
sudden conversion, and to the Baptist his theory of immer- 
sion — and it is worth trying. I saw Dr. Cuthbert yesterday, 
of St. Simon and St. Jude’s Church, and he rather dissuaded 
me from the Episcopal ministry. He said that he should 
advise my going to Princeton, but that I better remain a 
nominal Unitarian, fighting against Parkerism, than give 
myself up to the pettinesses which he says are reigning at 
the New York Seminary. He says they are all going to 
Kome. But one thing. Professor, I wish to know before I 
commit myself. You simply say that you deny the authority 
of a synod packed by Constantine to force upon the Church 
any creed. You do not require me to deny that creed on its 
own merits — at least the divinity of my Saviour.” 

The young man slightly bowed his head while speaking ; 
there was an embarrassed pause. Presently, however, the 
Professor’s friend came to the rescue. 

“ Oh, no, certainly not ; only to hold back from all posi- 
tive statements outside of Scripture, as surely unauthorized. 
By the way, I can show you clearly that the Athanasian 
Creed was never written by him, but is clearly a Latin 
forgery.” 

“Very well,” said Maurice. “I am a liberal Christian, 
that is, I do not believe in the compulsion of creeds, and I 
will go to Cambridge next w'eek.” 

Six weeks more have passed, and Bryan Maurice is saun- 


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tering up the lovely avenue leading to Divinity Hall. The 
building he enters bears little likeness to the glorious col- 
leges of Oxford and Cambridge, but is less like a barrack 
than the other structures where “ingenuous youth” abides 
in the New-England University. He ascends to the second 
story, unlocks his door with a pass-key, and enters a mode- 
rate sized but cheerful chamber. Upon its walls are hung 
a few colored prints of Italian scenes, a very good lithograph 
of Salisbury Cathedral, and a single-line engraving of rare 
finish — “ a proof” — from Hunt’s “ Light of the World.” A 
bookcase of plain shelves of stained deal nearly fills one 
end of the room. Over his narrow iron bedstead there is 
placed against the wall a plain wooden cross ; Lexicon, 
papers, &c., are strewn rather confusedly upon the table. 
He seats himself by the pleasant window overlooking the 
pathway he has just come, takes up a book, but does not 
seem inclined to study. In fact, he falls into a reverie — a 
practice which has rather gained upon him of late. He 
began fiercely to acquire such theology as was ready to be 
taught there, and enthusiastically to make the acquaintance 
of his companions in study. There was, we suspect, a little 
disappointment in both. Presently steps are heard in the 
entry ; then a knock at the door, and to his response, 
“ Come in,” enters a young man of perhaps twenty-two, in 
a rather shabby dressing-gown, and slippers trodden down 
at the heels. 

“ Ah, good-day, Blanchard,” says Maurice, quietly, not 
over-eagerly, for he has come to suspect his new friend will 
prove a bore. The new-comer throws himself into an 
easy-chair, and gazes about the room. Plainly as it was 
furnished, it had an unmistakable air of elegance and refine- 
ment. The colors of the carpet harmonized with the table- 
cover and the curtains. The bindings of the books were 
rich and costly, the lamp upon the study-table an elegant 
bronze, and the little mementoes of foreign travel (some 
which Maurice had sent home by sailing packet) disposed 
about the room were unique. A vase of flowers was upon 
the study-desk. Blanchard’s eye slowly mastered these 
details, and then, with a half envious sigh, his thought 
reverted to the bare, close, and dusty room he had just 
descended from. It was a thought born of the same mental 
comparison which spoke in his first remark. 


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“ Of course you won’t be in a hurry to take the first call 
that offers.” 

“Time enough to think of that when I graduate; here 
am‘ I just in the school, and not at all sure I shall go 
through.” 

“Well, but,” persisted the other, “you must think about 
it, only I suppose you are easy enough with friends and 
influence. But it worries me all the time. Two thirds of 
the last class are settled by this time ; and of the rest, one 
is going to be an assistant, and the other tw’^o did n’t study 
for preaching, but only to pass three years in Cambridge, — 
one is going to Germany, and the other is waiting for one 
of the new college professorships. They all got places 
easy ; three or four old parishes fell vacant about the same 
time ; one of the class was booked beforehand for a Boston 
church, and only one had to go about candidating. There 
can’t be such good luck three years running, and there’s 
five in the senior class before our turns come, so you see it 
is serious.” 

“ Oh,” said Maurice, carelessly, “ I think it does n’t sig- 
nify. If a man has made up his mind to preach, he can 
find places enough ; the trouble with me is to know what to 
preach, the where I’ll leave till the time comes.” 

“Well, but that is a trouble too. You can’t tell. Last 
year’s class were all for Parker, but they say that the old 
conservatism is coming back again, especially out West. I 
wish I knew what to go for.” 

Maurice stared, hardly taking in the drift of the remark. 
Blanchard went on — “It does n’t matter to you, I suppose, 
but with me it is everything; if I can’t get a church, I must 
go to teaching.” 

“ Wise, my dear fellow, you’re just the one I Avant to 
see,” Maurice exclaimed, as a slender, pale, intellectual- 
looking young man entered. 

“ Well, Maurice, what is it you want me to see, or to hear 
me say?” And he carelessly lounged on to the sofa, and, 
more by habit than with the intent to read, took up a book. 

“I want you to tell me what I am here for,” replied 
Maurice. 

“ For eighteen months or two years, I suppose,” said the 
other. 

“No, — but just tell me; I have been here six weeks. T 


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came fully believing that Unitarianism was the pure lurm 
of primitive Christianity, and that I ought to spread and 
defend it. But here, where ought to be the headquarters 
of the faith, they teach nothing definite at all, and every- 
body seems to believe what he pleases.” 

“ Well, my boy, don’t you see the advantage of that?” 

“No, I can’t say that I do. It was only last night, in 
this very room, Spencer declared that he did not conceive 
it of any importance whether one believed in a personal 
deity or no, and that he regarded all doctrines concerning 
a future state as snares to the soul.” 

^ “We are rather loose here, that’s a fact. I am sure I 
don’t know what I believe myself, only I think I am not 
quite so sure of what I donH believe as Spencer is. Blan- 
chard, here, believes the chief end of man — that is, of 
theological man — is to get a call to a nice parish, and he is 
ready to preach accordingly. You, I fancy, have a hanker- 
ing after the pretty ways of the Episcopalians, whom I 
detest, root and branch. Then we all believe,” added he, 
looking at his watch, “that it is time for the Greek Testa- 
ment lecture.” 

Maurice and the other rose, leaving Wise still lounging 
on the sofa. “I shall stay here in your comfortable quar- 
ters ; come back when lecture is done,” he said. 

The two departed for the room of the exegetical professor. 
That gentleman was a thin, spare man, somewhat bald, 
with a caustic, dry, and unreverential manner of speech. 
The scholarship displayed in the recitation was good, at 
least upon the part of the Harvard men, who formed two 
thirds of the class, but the exegesis excessively bare and 
superficial. To exaggerate discrepancies, to discover con- 
tradictions where none were, seemed to be the purpose of 
the lesson. The latter verses of the lesson, which was the 
third chapter of St. Matthew, brought them to the mention 
of the Holy Spirit’s descent in the likeness of a dove. 
“What,” said the Professor, “do you understand, Mr. Jones, 
by the dove lighting upon Jesus?” 

“ We reject, of course,” replied the pupil, with an air of 
glib satisfaction, “ the popular and legendary explanation 
which Matthew gives. The dove, as an emblem of spiritual 
holiness, was seen to light on Jesus, and the populace fancy 
it to be a miracle. There being no personality to the Holy 


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Ghost, we cannot, of course, understand any emhodimenl 
of it in an animal. Matthew is merely speaking to record 
the impression of the multitude.” 

“Very well, sir,” said the Professor; “but that does not 
explain why the dove should be hovering near a crowd of 
men, nor why it should have been specially attracted to 
Jesus. We must take care that our innate unwillingness 
to receive the fact of miracles does not lead us into incon- 
sistencies. Mr. Mack, (turning to the next, a heavy, dull, 
rustic-looking man, considerably older than the rest,) — Mr. 
Mack, how do you meet this difficulty ?” 

The neophyte of the theologic Eleusinia hesitated; the. 
class stirred in anticipation of the coming fun. When the 
lectures dragged, it was not unusual for Mack to be put on. 
“ Guess he saw a worm, sir.” 

The class giggled, the Professor smiled, and gave himself 
the stock explanation. “ I apprehend, gentlemen, that the 
superior holiness of the Messiah attracted and irresistibly 
impelled the dove to draw near to Him, and overcame, in 
fact, the natural timidity of the creature. This is not 
miracle, but simply unusual. With the same perfection, we 
might be able thus to attract the inferior creation.” 

“ Professor,” here broke in another, — “why, if the creative 
intellect is the principle of life in all things, may it not be 
found throughout the universe ?” 

“ I don’t apprehend the remark,” replied the Doctor. 

“ Well, I mean, if God is in all life, and all life centres in 
Him, why is not the Spirit of God in that dove descending 
upon Jesus, just as God’s thought dwelt in him peculiarly, 
because he was a good and holy man ?” 

“ Hum, — ye-e-s, that is a novel and striking view,” said 
the Doctor, a little out of his depth. 

“Well, Professor,” continued the pertinacious inquirer, 
“I want to bring about a parallel with that case of Ma- 
homet’s dove. He was a great Eastern teacher also. Now, 
Mr. Carlyle proves conclusively that he could not be guilty 
of a trick, so that we reject the story of the dove’s picking 
peas from his ear, and yet the legend rests upon too strong 
evidence to be denied. Mankind do not invent such inci- 
dents. Mahomet was also a great world-soul, — an inspired, 
fiery-hearted, devout man. Why is not his dove a second 
example of the same manifestation, — the sympathy between 


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129 


the Spirit of God in nature and the Spirit of God in holy 
men ?” 

“ Really, a new point ; I will consider it,” said the Pro- 
fessor. “ Our hour is up,” (looking at his watch ;) and the 
class broke up. 

Maurice went to his room silent and disturbed. He 
wanted faith, and here was general unsettlement. Wise 
looked up as he entered, and, reading the trouble in his 
face, greeted him with a calm smile. 

“ Old fellow, I’ve a great mind to throw this up and go 
to Andover ; it may be better, it can’t be worse.” 

“I think not,” said Wise. “You don’t know Andover. 
Just drop that recitation, as I have. Do your own studying; 
get some good Commentaries, and work independently.” 

“ Then I might as well be at home as here.” 

“ No ; here you have the atmosphere of study, such as it 
is.” Wise added this last with a significant shrug. “You 
have books in plenty, and, above all, your work, and nothing 
else to do. Now’, Maurice, I like you ; you are not half so 
much afloat as I am, and I am getting steadier, and one 
thing we can do, stand by each other. The suspicion has 
crossed my mind more than once, that the old Orthodoxy, 
if one understood it rightly, may be the thing. If it is, I 
would even turn Episcopalian, — which I have always 
thought the intensest humbug out, — rather than stick to a 
lie, just because it is ‘gifted’ and -spiritual’ and ‘intellec- 
tual,’ and all that. But I think there is no need of that. 
We can do better than to go anywhere. I am a Unitarian 
by blood and birth. If the Church will keep where Chan- 
ning and Peabody and Ware placed it, I w’ould not leave it . 
for the world. We must bring back their ways, and walk 
in them. They were loving and reverent and earnest men. 
These fellows here now have neither clear convictions nor 
manly purposes. They are just sentimentalizing or sneer- 
ing. They are afraid to look a question of fact in the face. 
What I want, is to know what is true. The Bible may be 
the outgrow’th of a local development of the religious senti- 
ment in man, or it may be a sacred and authoritative reve- 
lation. It does n’t matter a button to me how it shall turn 
out, only let me know’ clearly wdiich it is. But half the 
fellow’s here go on, like Balaam’s ass, betw’een tw’O blind 
walls of propositions, wliich are assumed to be final. No 


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fear that they will meet an angel to stop them by the way. 
On the one hand, the Bible must n’t be rejected, because 
that won’t do ; on the other hand, the supernatural can’t be 
believed, because it can’t. There’s where they are. I am 
ready, I say, for either. I can believe the supernatural, or 
reject the Bible, whichever is right And — and — I want 
you to stay here and help me find out that. For the life 
of me I cannot understand why Unitarianism wants to 
ignore the miracles, unless it is afraid that they will prove 
the Lord’s divinity. I don’t say they do, for I don’t think 
so ; but if I did, I must say I could take the Trinity as 
infinitely easier to receive than an account wdiich is based 
upon a series of impossibilities, blunders, and deceptions, 
and cannot be received except by cutting it to little bits. 
It is the w'eakest of subterfuges,” said the young man, 
springing to his feet and pacing the room. “There is 
Freeman, — Franklin Freeman, you know% — wLo was — 
well, never mind what — in our junior year; he rooms next 
me, and is everlastingly boring me about the moral beauty 
of the Lord’s teachings being something apart from the 
Lord’s life, and saying that that may have been a tissue of 
impostures, (he rather thinks it was,) without injuring the 
spiritual worth of His words. The fellow,— I could kick 
him. I suppose he thinks it a nice doctrine for some people 
nowadays, — as if it were possible for any living soul to be a 
great teacher of truth, and be the while acting lies. The 
plain English of this stuff is just this, — one or two of these 
fellows really mean it, by the w^ay,— that they intend to do 
about as they please, and to make pretty talk hide ugly 
action ; the rest all follow, for these men happen to be the 
ablest in the school. Now this I am sure of. I am not sure 
that there is any institution of the ministry; I am not 
positive that there is a God even. But I do know that if 
there is a God, and if He calls men to serve Him as clergy- 
men, it must be in no lying and dirty and selfish ways. 
Whatever His Apostles may have preached, they did what 
the Lord said.” 

“Why,” said Maurice,— anxious to get out of his per- 
plexed, disheartened state,— “why do you always say the 
Lord, and never Christ, or Jesus, like the rest here?” 

“Because if He was, and if the record is true, that is the 
way the Apostles did almost always. But, Maurice, — to 


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131 


come back to tlie subject, — you see I appreciate your little 
arts at pursuing aii unpleasant topic; — don’t go off. We 
have, at least, one work to do here, — to raise this school 
out of the state it has fallen into, if we can: the rest can 
wait. Stand by me, and I will by you.” 

They locked into each other’s faces a moment, and then, 
“I will,” said Bryan Maurice, and the two struck hands in 
the clasp of an equal and manful friendship. 

One result of this morning’s talk was to reconcile Mau- 
rice to his place. Saltonstall Wise was, as he said, wholly 
adrift, yet not weakly. He was a skeptic in the best sense 
of the term, — an examiner, a trier. The influence of the 
two young men was soon felt, much as they kept to them- 
selves. They took to attending some of the Law School 
lectures, and thus, in that strong, healthy atmosphere, 
gained tone and vigor against the enervating sentimentalism 
of the Divinity Hall. Upon one i)oint Maurice fell back, 
after a cursory examination of the arguments pro and coiij 
upon the high Arian doctrine. From that position he com- 
bated the whole tendency of his surroundings. He decided 
that the Trinity was an interpolated doctrine of the fourth 
century. With this exception, he struggled to realize the 
catholic doctrine. One victory he soon obtained. He con- 
vinced Wise that Episcopacy was the teaching of the New 
Testament. If, as in the days of Arius, there were now an 
episcopate holding those views, he would have applied to it 
for orders. What he yet failed to perceive was the exis- 
tence of the Visible Church, and its right to enlarge the 
ancient creeds. 

But he fought manfully against the rationalism around 
him. One afternoon, in a classmate’s room, the subject of 
the Lord’s Supper was brought up. 

“My notion of that,” said his companion, “is very much 
like this: You rememl3er our classmate Frank Goodstowe, 
the Parson, we called him, who died in Kome. Now, sup- 
pose he had left a request to us, that on certain days, in 
order to remember him, we should eat a piece of bread and 
drink a glass of wine: that would be a sacrament, just as 
Jesus desired His disciples. That is all there is of it.” 

Maurice sprang to his feet. “Look here, Willis!” he said; 
“I was with Frank when he died, holding him in my arms 
when he received the Sacrament for the first and last time. 


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and I would just rather die on the spot than believe it to be 
no more than what you say. I cannot tell what it is, but 
this I knoWy it is no such trifling as your deflnition makes 
it.” And Maurice marched out of the room, and did not 
return to it again for a month. 

Strange to say, Maurice never had communed according 
to the Unitarian rite, and his neglect to do so had never 
been noticed. The old Professor once or twice spoke to 
him about it; but Bryan simply asked for further time, and 
his request was granted. Wise took tlie same position, and 
so high was the personal character of the two young men 
that they were not interfered with. 

They fell, moreover, into the practice of going upon Sun- 
day afternoons to the little Episcopal church across the 
lesser Delta, but as that did not interfere with the hour of 
the chapel-service it passed unnoticed. 


CHAPTER XII. 


T hen wise and Maurice took to spending their Sundays 
in Boston. They fell, very naturally, into the broadest 
eclecticism, which they made as stirring as they could by 
well-arranged contrasts. 

Salstonstall Wise belonged to one of the “old” families, 
and the really old Massachusetts families are of a capital 
stock, the best in existence — the English country gentry, 
which, after a couple of centuries in the American hot-bed, 
has ripened into a rare intellectual delicacy of flavor. The 
best performances, the highest literary achievements, may 
not be found among them, in fact, rarely are found where 
culture is uniform, but the best appreciation is. English 
authors are beginning to find this out. So, though the rest 
of the United States may laugh at the “ hub ” and pass 
worn-out jokes upon “ modern Athens,” there is never a 
writer in this broad land who does not look to Fields’ 
counter as his true court presentation, and the “ blue and 
gold ” as the genuine court-dress, only to be properly pro- 
vided at the skilled atelier of Riverside. 

Salstonstall Wise had, of course, a Boston home, with a 
rich aunt or uncle dwelling in Mount Vernon or Beacon 
Street, or in Pemberton Square, no matter precisely which, 
and there the two young men always dined on Sundays. 
It was rather a shock to their conservative Amphitryon, 
not to have their steady presence in the comfortable old 
red cushioned pew beneath the shadow of the Federal Street 
pulpit, and still more when their chat at the table disclosed 
that their morning had been spent at High-Mass in the 
Romish Cathedral, or amid the intoned litanies of St. Poly- 
carp, or listening to Father , the seaman Methodist 

preacher, or at the Swedenborgian Chapel ; or again in 
alternate visiting between the Music Hall and “Brimstone 
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Corner,” the Stone Chapel and the Second Adventists, in 
an obscure market-hall. However, it was set down for a 
sort of theological-wild-oat-sowing, and as Wise had a 
cousin who rarely made his appearance at the Sunday 
dinner-table, and whose Sunday occupations were by no 
means edifying, the old people concluded that young men 
might do worse. It was preparatory to a staid settling 
down into the Unitarian compromise. Unitarianism was 
growing restless just then over its ordinary fare and craving 
new sensations. Perhaps it was well for young men, who 
were soon to have congregations of their own, to know what 
was likely to attract, and the Unitarian mind, like Prince 
Achille Murat over his turkey-buzzard, “ having no preju- 
diz,” was ready to find palatable whatever could be cooked. 
Only Maurice would sometimes let drop a word or two 
which showed a familiarity with Roman usages that made 
his entertainers turn uneasily in their chairs. The Church 
of Rome is the hete 7ioire of “ liberal ” Christianity. 

Together the young men, especially in their evening 
walks out to Cambridge by moonlight, or starlight, or lamp- 
light, theorized abundantly over the Church of the Future. 
A revived Episcopacy, with a liberalized creed and an 
expurgated and enlarged Liturgy, made their favorite 
dream. As was natural, the more they indulged it, the 
more they shrank from the commonplace, uninspiring life 
of a New-England country congregation, such as they had 
to look forward to. Wise, to be sure, had ample expecta- 
tions, and Maurice present means, which put both beyond the 
necessity of immediate work. But Maurice had the burden 
of his vows in the cabin of the little schooner heavily upon 
him. He felt that he must seize the first ministerial open- 
ing. Meanwhile, in rather a desultory manner, he was 
laying the foundation of much information, and, of course, 
some knowledge. One bad habit he was fast yielding to — 
that of simply keeping out of sight whatever was awkward 
in history or Scripture. As an eclectic, he could do so ; it 
Avas part of his creed. “ Interpolations,” “ Corruptions of 
the Fourth Century,” were the rubbish-baskets into which 
he shot all material discordant with his new plan. In this 
his friend, the Rev. Turinell Hooper, who had been the 
means of persuading him to the Divinity School, greatly 
aided. 


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135 


The Rev. Turinell Hooper was a man with a strong con- 
servative bent, who had nevertheless become fully committed 
to the drift of his position. His whole attitude was that of 
resistance to the liberalizing tendencies of his communion, 
but of course, whenever he took a strong brace, his feet 
would slide beneath him, and the attempt to regain an erect 
position not infrequently threw him much farther forward 
than he meant to go. Once or twice he had ingeniously 
turned the interpolation theory quite cleverly upon his 
adversaries, and had set up some brilliant theories concern- 
ing the chief Unitarian proof-texts. He was characterized 
among his brethren as “ an able man, but so bigoted.” 
IMaurice passed much spare time in the minister’s study. 
Mr. Hooper loved to read to his young friend passages from 
the sermons he was preparing, and then, having thus freed 
his mind, would turn with a sigh to the ungenial work of 
toning them down to suit the weakness of his broad-aisle 
pews. He afiected with his intimates an ultra-ecclesiastical 
style of talk, and was profoundly severe upon the Puritan 
axiom which regarded the Church of England as descended 
from the Church of Rome. He was often called behind his 
back, “ the Bishop of Boston.” He really taught Maurice 
a good deal of high Anglicanism upon the subject of the 
British Primitive Church. It was from him that Maurice 
obtained the Oxford tracts, and some other literature not 
known to the Cambridge course. Nevertheless, few traces 
of these Saturday morning talks appeared in the Sunday 
morning Sermons, and his choir having made rebellious 
speeches and wry faces at the innovation of sundry attempts 
at chanting, the effort was dropped. He succeeded, indeed, 
in spite of one or two sturdy dissenters, in persuading his 
congregation to sit during the prayers. One or two old 
white-haired magnates rose for a while at the heads of their 
pews, but as age crept upon them, were glad to rest their 
limbs. He only, however, could induce a few, a very few 
enthusiastic young ladies, to bow their heads upon the front 
of their pews. Maurice alone knelt one Sunday, and as he 
sate conspicuously in the clerical pew, was accordingly 
commented on by the congregation in sundry dinner-table 
talks. 

“ I’m not going to be made an Episcopalian of,” said one 
Athenian matron ; “if I want that sort of thing. I’ll go to 


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Trinity. I don’t object to sit, especially when the weathei 
is warm, but as for kneeling, just like the Catholics ” 

So, in different ways, said pretty much all, and IMr. 
Hooper’s experiment came to nought. 

The winter rolled away, and spring succeeded with its 
dreary east winds, till of a sudden burst upon them the 
bright, blooming, leafy June — the one bit of ideal loveliness 
in the New England year. Maurice had tried, partly in 
memory of Ellen Winrow, partly for its own sake, to keep 
Lent, but there w'as no daily service; and Ash-Wednesday 
happening to coincide with an exhibition day at Harvard, 
he found but a few scattered worshippers in the little church, 
and came out from it only to be drawn into the College 
Chapel (the old one in University Hall) to hear the oration 
by a senior, wLo w’as the crack man of his class, and, of 
course, the hero of his day. The tyranny of university 
custom is strong, and then as the young orator was another 
cousin of Saltonstall Wise, he had to go afterward to his 
rooms in Hohvorthy to congratulate him, and then was 
forced to stay and eat oysters, and salad, and ices amid a 
crowed of gay young girls. Being known as a student in 
Divinity, the matronly element in the party made much of 
him, and with courteous reminiscences of his owm appear- 
ances on the College stage, promised to attend his maiden 
sermon, and otherwise flattered and made much of him. It 
is all very well for good readers to be shocked at this, but 
did you ever try to follow church usages without being a 
churchman ? So, w^hen Good Friday and Easter came they 
passed unnoticed, save by a regretful memory. In tw’o 
things, however, the young man remained unchanged. He 
w^as true to his dead friend and his lost love. He fought 
shy of the intellectual belles of Boston, who wmuld gladly 
have chatted with him. 

However when May had come, and with it occasional 
w’arm and balmy days, came also the anniversary meetings 
in the city. There w’as a general cessation of lectures and 
recitations in the Divinity Hall, and the theological ele- 
ment of the University strode or rolled over Charles River 
Bridge to do its part as speakers or hearers in the grand 
eloquence of the platform. It w’as on a Thursday morning, 
at about half-past eight, that Wise and Maurice alighted 
from the omnibus (for as yet the horse-railroad was not) in 


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137 


front of the Revere. They passed into tlie hall to summon 
a waiter, whom they were wont to fee, to take their over- 
coats and to brush off* the classic dust of Old Cambridge 
and the plebeian soil of the “ Port.” 

“Well! where shall we go this morning. Brother M.?” 
said Wise. 

“Oh, I don’t know. We heard Phillips yesterday, and 
Garibaldi Brown Tuesday, and the elect generally on 
Monday. Let us have something new. Suppose, for 
variety, we go to St. Polycarp’s.” 

“ Come, that’s a good move. I haven’t heard a bit of 
Liturgy for ever so long, and it will take the taste of those 
awful personal prayers of Freeman’s and Blanchard’s out 
of one’s mouth. Pity it isn’t a Litany day, though.” 

They started to go. 

“ Pardon me, gentlemen,” said a young man of their own 
age who had been standing by and overhearing them ; “ but 
you are too early ; service will not be to-day before half-past 
ten — Ascension Day, you know.” 

“ Oh,” said Maurice, “ then we had better go to the Bible 
Society meeting.” 

“ No, no,” said Wise ; “ if it is all the same to you, 1 had 
much rather not. We can go to Copeland’s for an ice, and 
then it will be time. Much obliged to you, sir, for your 
information.” 

The stranger bowed, and turned away into the reading- 
room, and they noticed as he went that his dress was 
clerical. 

“Never mind the ice-cream,” said Maurice. “I want to 
go to Ticknor’s. Books before bonbons.”' 

“ Very well, books be it.” * And so the next hour slipped 
away in that fascinating old two-story shop on the corner 
of School Street, where so many hours have been killed and 
bright thoughts born. AVise had just laid down a book 
and Maurice taken out his watch, when from the inner 
penetralia came out the young clergyman, followed by one 
of the firm. 

“Next month, then, Mr. Fields,” they heard him say, 
and the handsome head of the publisher was nodded in 
assent. The stranger blushed slightly at sight of the two, 
and then, as they smiled and bowed, said — 


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“ If you are still in the mood for St. Poly carp’s, it is near 
the time.” They left the shop together. 

“ By the way,” said Wise, “ how comes it that to-day is 
A.scension Day? Was last Sunday Easter?” 

“ Oh, no,” said their new friend ; “ Easter was more than 
a month ago.” 

“ How is that ? I’m sure the hymn says — 

‘The rising Lord forsakes the tomb, 

Up to His Father's court He flies.’ ” 

“ Whatever the hymn says, St. Luke, who ought to know, 
says, ‘ Being seen of them forty days, teaching the things 
pertaining to the kingdom of heaven.’ ” 

“ I say, Bryan, how that refutes Mack’s argument, that 
the Resurrection must have been a myth, because the 
disciples would be sure to start for home the day after the 
Sabbath.” 

“ Yes, and Frank Freeman’s commentary thereon, that 
the Lord’s appearances were produced by the odic forces of 
his body remaining in the tomb.” 

“ But that is really so, is it ? I never thought of the forty 
days before.” 

“Well, gentlemen, does it not prove something else 
beside the fact of the Resurrection ? It seems to me that 
there was time for pretty definite instruction to the Apostles 
about the Church they were soon to found. You see, two 
great stumbling-blocks were now removed : the atoning 
death, the rising from the grave, were two central facts from 
which the Lord could teach his doctrines and form his 
institutions.” 

“Well; but why, then, have we no account of that 
period ?” 

“ I think we have, only one must know what to look for. 
The Evangelists did not write gossip about their Master, 
only central and germinal truths. There is enough there, 
but unless you have the eye that sees and the ear that 
hears, there is nothing.” 

“ Very true,” said Maurice. “ I remember a fellow who 
walked through the Vatican Gallery in a quarter of an 
hour, and then said, ‘ Hang this ; let’s go and have a cigar 
outside.’ The Apollo and the Laocoon were thrf)«vn away 
on him, to be sure.” 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


139 


“Yes,” said the other, “all the wonders of the earth are 
hidden to the eye of the Australian savage. Study, then, 

the history of the great forty days, niy breth ” The 

young divine had got upon one of his sermons, but sud- 
denly catching himself, stammered, blushed, and ended 
rather abruptly, — “That is, I — I fancy, gentlemen, that 
you’ll find it pay ; and as we’re here at St. Polycarp’s, 
you’ll excuse me if I go to the vestry. Take any seat you 
like ; the seats are all free.” So saying, he disappeared up 
an alley way running to the rear of the church. 

This famous Boston church was not at that time an im- 
posing edifice either without or within. The flat ceiling, 
the heavy lumbering galleries, were incongruously enough 
mated with the beautiful stone altar and broad gilt cross 
over it ; its canopied font and its double range of stalls. 
Yet its very mixture of Anglicanism and New England 
suited Maurice, perhaps, better than the most elaborate of 
mediaeval restorations, which he could hardly then appre- 
ciate. It seemed to him very nearly what he was hoping to 
accomplish. There was a large vase of natural flowers 
upon the altar, and the font was ruddy with scarlet blos- 
soms, topped with a floral cross. The silver vessels were 
upon the altar and on the credence-table, the vases of the 
paten and flagon showing underneath the white cloth. The 
congregation was quite respectable in numbers. Maurice 
saw more than one familiar face among them of country 
divines, who had come up to the metropolis, and who, like 
himself, had “dropped in” for a bit of Oxford scarlet, which, 
to them, was quite as fascinating, and by no means so peril- 
ous to good standing, as the true purple of Rome. A proces- 
sion of surpliced priests and of choristers swept in from the 
vestry and took their places in the stalls, among them their 
new acquaintance. But whose was that tall and stately 
form which appeared at the opposite end of the altar from 
the Rector? Surely that face was familiar to Maurice. 
And doubt changed to certainty when the clergyman took 
his place at the simple lectern, and in those impressive tones 
never to be forgotten wlien once heard announced his text, 
and began to speak of the great event of the day’s com- 
memoration. Maurice felt his cheek burn and his heart 
beat quicker as he recognized Gardiner. The subject of 
the sermon was the necessity of the Ascension to the per 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


fecting of the mediatorial scheme, the continual presence of 
the Intercessor at the right hand of the Father, His repre- 
sentation on earth through His Vicar, the Holy Ghost, and 
the means by which that real though spiritual presence was 
attainable in the Holy Communion. It did not seem like 
an argument so much as an exposition of well-known facts. 
Each graceful gesture, each thrilling tone, was full of that 
personal power which forces conviction. One seemed to be 
listening to familiar truths spoken with that intense con- 
viction which leaves no room for doubt or denial. The 
wonderful clearness of the whole was like the bursting of 
pure white light into a dark chamber. Maurice saw the 
old gray-headed lawyer and judge who sate before him — 
one well known to the highest records of the judiciary of the 
Commonwealth — nod his head involuntarily from time to 
time with that air which only the Bench can show when in 
a hard-fought case the decisive point of evidence is forced 
from a reluctant witness, or brought into clear relief by the 
skilful statement of an accomplished counsel. To their 
surprise no pause followed the close of the morning service, 
but the Rector proceeded at once with the Communion 
Office. One or two near the door stole softly out, but the 
rest remained ; and Maurice, for the second time in his life, 
found himself spectator of the Anglican, or rather Ameri- 
can, order of celebrating the Sacrament. He did not, of 
course, go up to the altar, though one or two of the Unita- 
rian ministers did. But he was deeply impressed by the 
service, especially at the Trisagion, when a boy’s clear, 
birdlike voice took up the first part alone, and the silvery 
recitative was followed by a burst of choral harmony chant- 
ing the 

“ Holy ! Holy ! Holy ! Lord God of Hosts !” 

Scarcely less was he moved by the hearty gladsomeness 
of the concluding “ Gloria in Excelsis” He lingered out- 
side the church in hopes to meet Gardiner, but the clergy 
passed out by another way, and he waited in vain. 

“ Well, Saltonstall, what do you think of it?” he said at 
last, as they were on their way back to the Revere, seeing 
that Wise was disinclined to speak. 

“I don’t know, Maurice. I feel as if I had been in 
another country. I am afraid we can never make that 


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141 


do. Our Cambridge impressiveness wouldn’t somehow 
suit that, it is all so different, and then the people seem to 
know exactly where to come into their places. You never 
could get New-Englanders into such elaborate simplicity 
without showing awkwardness.” Wise spoke from a favorite 
theory of his, that Episcopalians in Boston were a sort of 
colony from other regions — foreigners, English, or Middle 
States men. “You know,” he went on, “we drilled for 
three weeks to get up our Christmas-eve service in the 
church at Cambridge, and yet it was a dismal failure.” 

“ I suspect, old fellow, the secret is that they believe it 
all.” 

“ Suppose they do, how is one to get the believing ? I 
shall never try for that, unless — unless, as I sometimes 
begin to think, I get to do a bit of believing myself.” 

“/shall try,” said Maurice. “I think it can be done. 
Our people have never had a fair chance.” 

“ Well, I hope you may succeed ; for my part” — and here 
Wise fell into a reverie, and would say no more, except 
once he abruptly broke out — “ I don’t come into town again 
this term. ‘ Stick as you be’ is a good motto till a better 
turns up. Who was it who preached ? That man is no fool, 
whatever the Episcopal clergy generally may be.” 

When the summer vacation came, AVise and Maurice went 
off on a long projected trip to the AVhite Mountains, and 
getting lodgings at a farm-house under the shadow of Cho- 
corua, spent their six weeks in foot-rambles, trouting, and 
sketching in that glorious region. Perhaps it may be thought 
that our seeker for the truth is falling away from the pro- 
gress of his earlier days, already chronicled. But human 
life, except now and then, will not move dramatically, and 
progress is often in strange zigzags, and by fitful starts. 
Maurice was passing from the period of mere impressibleness 
to that of reflection. The past had buried its seeds in the 
earth, but they were not dead. His morbidness was disap- 
pearing ; a healthier and purer tone was coming to his mind. 
Moreover, he was now learning something of New-England 
life, and getting to master that joons asinorum of the “Brah- 
min caste” — how to talk intelligently to the people. So 
when he returned to his last year of Cambridge life, it was 
with an invigorated frame and a soul freed from the shadows 
of his homeward voyage. This had never till then been 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


thn case with him. His solitary hours were profoundly 
melancholy, or else feverishly busy, and in fact had been 
one long struggle to escape from his own thoughts. This 
has not before been mentioned, but it might be inferred from 
his restless seeking of religious variety, his temporary and 
desultory raids into various branches of study, which were 
all so many forms of exorcism against the spectres. He 
had never come into his life’s work so healthily as after this 
summer ramble. Even the Doctor — for the Rev. Turinell 
Hooper was now D. D., from the recent Commencement of 
his Alma Mater — recognized the change, and said, “ How 
well you look, my boy. I think, instead of Nahant, I must 
try the Mountains next year.” So Bryan set himself down to 
severer study, mainly that of Hebrew and its cognates, and, 
by way of recreation, to read St. Augustine. Wise laughed, 
lounged, and by fits and starts studied with him, but they 
were now much apart from their fellow-students. With tlie 
three of their own class they had no sympathy, and the new 
men, mostly steady, plain, and plodding young men, did not 
come within w'hat in Cambridge parlance they called their 
sphere. When the winter vacation commenced. Wise WTnt 
ofi* for Washington, leaving Maurice the sole tenant of the 
Divinity Hall, except only one Middler, who was eking out 
his scanty income by teaching the little girls of a naval 
officer whose family were resident in Cambridge. 

It was a cold winter morning when Maurice returned to 
his comfortable study after a brisk walk to the post-oflice. 
He had obtained one letter only, which was from Wise: — 

“Washington, D. C. January 23, 18 — . 

“My Dear Elector of Saxony: — I must pitch right 
into my subject or I shall never have nerve enough for it. 
I have turned traitor to you ; I am not coming back to the 
school. I did not tell you even last term how wretchedly 
I felt about it, because I did not know myself I said to 
myself, it is only this miserable January thaw which always 
upsets me; but it was no such thing. The fact is, I cannot 
and will not enter the ministry all in a mist of doubt. I 
have talked with every minister I can find, Methodists, 
Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholic Priests, and they all 
have their sure grounds, as they think, to go on. I met our 
young friend, the dearly beloved brother of St. Polycarp’s, 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


143 


the other day, and had a long talk with him. He is not a 
strong-minded person, but he seemed to feel just as sure 
that something was given him in orders which made him fit 
to teach others, as I am sure that I am not fit. Now, what 
sort of grace would be given in the laying on of hands 
(which I don’t know whether they do or not) of Dr. Hooper, 
who believes the miracles, and the Rev. Eleazar Skinner, 
who holds that our Lord was a myth representing the pro- 
gress of free thought? So I have written to the Faculty to 
take my name off, and have accepted the post of private 
secretary to the Hon. D D , who is going out min- 
ister to the court of . I am going to try diplomacy 

till I can get clear beliefs about something. Now, my dear 
old fellow, forgive me; I am serving you shabbily, but I 
dare not go on any further. You’ll be all right; I have 
seen you working clear, and w^hen you get a church in Bos- 
ton I will come and be a pillar unto you. 

“I write this lightly; in fact I never did feel so liglit- 
hearted as I have since I resolved; but oh, you never can 
know what it has cost me. I have sent Dr. H. the wildest 
sort of an epistle which he will come and read to you. By 
the way, if you go anywhere, take him with you; it will be 
good for his ease of mind. 

“Yours, in all true aflTection and in spite of all, through 
everything.” S. W. 

Maurice sat pondering over this, and especially over the 
last sentence, which he could not make out at all, when 
there was a knock at the door, and the object of his 
thoughts appeared. “Have you heard,” he begun, — “yes I 
see you have. What is the matter? Is the boy crazy? I 
never did get such a letter in my life; read it,” — and he 
thrust a letter into Maurice’s hand, which read as follows: — 

“Washington, D. C., January 23, 18 — . 

“My Dear Doctor: — It is with inexpressible reluctance 
that I take up my pen to announce to you that the Church 
of the Future must first ‘catch its hare before it cooks it.’ 
The reason why is, I have found my chapter, ‘De Fide 
mea,’ to be like Bishop Pontoppida’s on owls, namely, 
‘There be no owls.’ I am going to live abroad for my 
country’s good. I believe in the ‘Ashburton Treaty’ and 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


‘The Memoirs of Machiavelli/ ‘The Boston Daily Adverti- 
ser’ and Wirt’s ‘Life of Patrick Henry,’ and I am on the 
‘anxious seat’ respecting the Monroe Doctrine. I have 
taken my name off the Divinity School book. I have come 
out a pure Hegelian, — ‘Nothing is, but everything is going 
to be.’ By the way, there is a little song of Heine’s, which, 
in my new role as di})lomat, I translated last night, and 
now furnish you as my confession of faith. Don’t set me 
down as wanting in all respect, but you see I am an eman- 
cipated theologue, and not yet a sententious secretary. Here 
is your Heine: — 

“ ‘ Rattle the drumsticks and never fear, 

And kiss the merry vivandicre. 

That is philosophy clean and clear, — 

That is the wisest books’ affair, 

*“Drum the people out of their sleep, 

Beat the reveille with all your might. 

Drumming and marching steadily keep, — 

That is philosophy’s topmost height. 

“‘That is philosopher Hegel’s prize. 

The highest thought that the books attain. 

I have embraced it because I am Wise, 

(no pun intended, Doctor, see the original,) 

And because I have “drumstick on the brain.’”” 

“There, Maurice,” said the Doctor, as Bryan looked up 
amused, “ was there ever such a fellow? It upsets my plans 
too. I was going to have you as my colleague next year, 
and the General Secretary had promised to send Wise to 
Connecticut where is a great opening among the Universal- 
ists, and now you must go.” 

“What! at once?” 

“ Oh no, when you are licensed from here. There are 
two places : one at Broadwater, in the centre of the State, 
and the other at Norowam, nearer New York. But, dear 
me, how ever shall we get off the rest of the lumber here? 
The best fellow of the last five years gone, for he has more 
leadership, more dash, in him than you, — I don’t know 
though that your steadiness is not worth more. Well, you 
must turn to writing sermons. You’ll want a dozen to start 
with, and when you’ve visited everybody, you can buckle 
down to serious work, two a week. If you have six weeks’ 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


145 


clear start, and write one a week in that time, that takes 
you nearly through ten weeks. Here I’ve marked down a 
lot of texts as I came out in the ’bus, — go at them in their 
order, and bring your sermons to me to look over.” 

And thus was Maurice commissioned for the ministry. 
The good Doctor bustled off and left Maurice in a deep 
study over his first homily. 

13 


CHAPTER XIII. 


ll/rAURICE succeeded better with his sermons than heex- 
pected, and yet not so well. He was a good writer, he 
had something of a religious experience to draw upon, and 
then he was working his way into something of the life of 
the New Testament period. Here he cut loose from his 
Unitarian bonds, for he found he must. Questions arose 
before him of no little interest and difficulty : the astound- 
ing apathy of the Hebrew mind toward our Lord’s miracles, 
— at least as compared with our own impressions ; the 
strange seething of the Hebrew social state, with its ineffec- 
tiveness of actual result ; the true conception of the charac- 
ters of Pilate, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and other 
subordinate actors in that stupendous drama, so different 
from the ordinary pictures of them ; into all these he 
threw himself with great ardor. A little training from his 
friend, the Doctor, gave him the needful command of the 
phraseology of the pulpit. The professor of pulpit elo- 
quence, a gentleman of fine and scholarly tastes and great 
geniality, was delighted. It was a renewal of the palmy 
days of the Unitarian fold, when her fiery young crusaders 
were annually astonishing the cultured elect of the metropo- 
lis. He sighed, too, as he thought how, once in the harness, 
all this vigor and originality might die away, under the 
weekly strokes of the parochial air-pump. However, he 
said nought in discouragement, and the young Senior 
dashed on in his triumphant course. 

This year the Church’s sacred seasons were not kept in 
prayer, but slyly “improved” in sermons. The narrow in- 
fluences of sectarian training were beginning to be felt ; he 
was obliged to take heed to what he was saying, even to 
imaginary congregations. He fell in with sundry pamphlets 
of controversy in which the Episcopalians were sharply at- 
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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


147 


tacked ; and, as of course the ideal Church of the future, 
with its broad altar and broad pulpit had no such spots on 
its (ideal) feasts of charity, he exulted much in the visionary 
comparison. He missed, also, Saltonstall Wise’s genial, 
saitrical vein. A dry remark of his friend had often 
brought him to his bearings, when in a flighty mood. 

By this time, no doiibt, the reader will have discovered 
that Bryan Maurice is somewhat romantic, and given to 
speculative tendencies. He needed the corrective of a 
practical life, and the outward contact of men and things; 
he had, moreover, begun his religious life wrongly ; there 
was no external counterpart in it to the inward change of 
principle and purpose; and he had begun to follow his own 
will, instead of seeking guidance. 

He received one or two letters from Wise, during his last 
term. Brief, pithy and droll, but with a minor key of deep 
sadness underneath, they were, — and withal, extremely 
puzzling. Just at the close of the term, a rumor reached 
the seniors of the Divinity School, that their late classmate, 
the Secretary of the Hon. the Minister Plenipotentiary at 
the Court of Monaco, had been received in the bosom of 
the “infallible church.” It disturbed, during twenty-four 
hours, Bryan’s work upon his graduating thesis. He felt 
that whatever Wise might do would be somehow so seriously 
in earnest, as to reopen many pages of his past life 
hitherto deemed closed. But he could not trace the rumor, 
and another letter came from Wise, saying nothing about 
it, but devoted to gay, operatic criticism. So the matter 
was dismissed from his thought. Commencement came, 
and with it the Divinity School exercises; these attract no 
brilliant audience, but the select gathering of the few who 
are anxious to see the special performances of the young 
men who are soon to “wag their pows in their ain poo- 
'pits.” 

Maurice w'as complimented by a better audience than 
usual. Several of the “dons,” who are ordinarily content 
with their place upon the platform on Commencement Day, 
and their share in the banquet and oratory of the Phi Beta 
dinner, strayed into the college chapel on the previous 
Monday. A few of those gifted ladies who watched over 
the unorthodoxy of the rising divines were there, and a 
stiller hush and earnest expectation awaited his opening 


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BKYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


words. His thesis, or sermon, had one merit at least, — it 
was brief. It dashed into the midst of its subject with a 
few, sharp, confident sentences, and then proceeded to un- 
fold the theory of a new Protestant ritualism adapted to 
the wants of the Unitarian body. Pie disclaimed utterly 
the idea that dilutions of the orthodox forms, emasculated 
creeds and liturgies, were to serve the turn of Unitarians. 
They were no Lazaruses, to be fed with crumbs from the 
rich men’s tables. “Surely,” he said, “the great Arian 
controversy had not been merely iconoclastic. The work 
of the scholars of the liberal school should be to revive the 
ancient forms under which the victims of state power had 
’worshipped, ere the Athanasian tyranny had banished them 
from their rightful altars. He made brief work of the 
barrenness of Congregationalist no-forms, and proclaimed 
the work of the Church to be the elimination out of the 
Greek and Roman rituals of the earlier, the pure, and the 
primitive forms.” 

Dr. Hooper was delighted, and all but forgot himself into 
awakening the applause permissible to secular efibrts; but 
one or two of the graver heads were shaken dubiously over 
their white neckcloths, and the venerable professor of exe- 
gesis dryly remarked to his colleague, “I don’t know who 

is to do this. Brother G is too old, and brother 

Maurice is rather young; and between these the rest of us 
are too busy. Perhaps somebody in Providence or Salem 
might try his hand at it.” 

Maurice was duly licensed to preach, but not, of course, 
“ordained,” not having any parish. Nevertheless, he was 
free to fulfil most ministerial offices, and he assumed, with- 
out hesitation, the style of “Rev.,” and was duly italicized 
in the coming Triennial. He declined one or two offers of 
preaching as a candidate in various towns, and went for a 
quiet vacation to the seaside cottage of Dr. Hooper, prepar- 
atory to his departure to the unknown wilds of Connecticut. 

The Doctor refused to let Maurice preach for him during 
this time, though in the habit of inviting the young licen- 
tiates very freely. “No, Maurice,” he said, “I don’t want 
you to do it. I count on you, and cannot let you make a 
single false step. If you preach before you have your own 
congregation before you, you will be in danger of acquiring 
mannerisms that you won’t get over for years. When, 


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149 


next year, you come up to Commencement, then I’ll have 
you out, but not now.” 

So Maurice remained quiet in his summer resting-place, 
and, after his hard work, was really braced up by his six 
weeks’ bathing and fishing and boating. 

I am tempted to chronicle some of his talks there, and 
his letters from Wise ; but at that rate, I shall never get 
him where I want him, and that is into one of the cars on 
a railroad going out of Providence. It was three o’clock 
of a sultry afternoon. There were few passengers, and after 
gazing a few moments at the picturesque appearance of the 
city, he found nothing more to occupy his attention. He 
])ethought himself of a volume of Emerson in his travelling- 
bag. He soon wearied of its familiar pages. The calm, 
contemplative philosophy was as dry husks to a soul on fire 
for action, and longing for tangible fields of labor. He had 
no sympathy with its vague Pantheism. He tried day- 
dreaming, — fancies of the country town whither he was 
bound, — but he ’was too warm for reverie; the remi- 
niscences of his travels, but there was the painful gulf of 
his homeward voyage between himself and his past. He 
looked about for congenial faces, that he might talk, but 
none appeared. 

At last, however, at a junction, one of his own age and 
apparent station got in, glanced around, with a pleasant 
look, and, as Maurice made a motion of giving him room, 
dropped sociably into the seat beside him. 

It was evident that both young men were of the Brahmin 
caste of New England life, and so, with a remark about the 
heat, the thread was caught. 

“ I have just come from the seaside,” the stranger said, 
“ and I feel this inland heat. I was officiating yesterday 
at Stonington, and was cool enough ; I had to ask the sexton, 
when he came into the vestry, to go round and close the 
chancel window.” 

“You are an Episcopal clergyman, then?” said Maurice, 
catching at the terms used ; “ you are just the one I wanted 
to meet. I, too, am a minister, though a very untried one.’^ 

“Not a Church clergyman?” 

“No — yes — of the Broad Church. I have sometimes 
fancied yours to be the Narrow Branch. I — I am a Uni- 
tarian. But we must not begin our acquaintance with dis- 


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cussion ; I have met with more courtesy from your denomi- 
nation than from the other orthodox sects. One thing I 
like much: you do not refuse us clerical fellowship on the 
ground of formulas you cannot explain and never use. If 
I understand rightly, you put us in the same boat with the 
strictest Calvinists, as being unordained. If you are right, 
of course you act properly, and we are wrong. I like, too, 
your service ; you never are given to uncharitable prayers 
at people. In fact, I hope to use your liturgy, — in some 
parts at least, and that is what I want to talk about. You 
won’t object, I dare say?” 

“Oh, by no means; but, pardon me, how will you manage 
it; I, too, have something to learn from you? Our service 
is founded on the faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, 
— God the Son, — and the Trinity is the corner-stone of the 
Prayer-Book. Pull out that and you will have the house 
down.” 

“ Ho,” said Maurice; “ I think not. You of course know 
more about your Book than I do ; but I have studied it a 
good deal, and it seems to me that changing a few, a very few 
phrases, we can get along. We admit, — or at least I admit,” 
he continued, as a remembrance of the Divinity School 
came over him — “ that Jesus Christ was the Son of God; 
but I do not go with you beyond Scripture, and say also 
God the Son. If I understand the Arian fathers I am with 
them, and, indeed I think I shall use the creed of St. Arius. 
It is only to say ‘ of like substance,^ and I am where I hold 
the whole Primitive Church to have been. But I think 
your plea for Orders may be good, and if I could meet with 
a Bishop of my own views, I would go to him and receive 
them at his hands.” 

The young divine had looked rather bewildered as this 
declaration went on. He had begun to rub up his seminary 
weapons; but the foe had suddenly shifted ground, — notout 
of range, but at the very muzzles of his guns. 

“My dear sir,” he said, “you can’t find such a Bishop, 
for the best of reasons. The Church departing from the 
faith loses the gift of Orders, — practically in history, I 
mean, — just as the Church abandoning the Succession will 
come to lose the faith. The Arian Bishops could not keep 
up the Succession.” 

“ There always was something mysterious and unaccount- 


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151 


able to me in the sub-Nicene period,” said Maurice; “how- 
ever, I can fall back upon my Congregational liberty of 
conscience and do without Orders, especially as I do hold 
tliat each Body has a right to frame its own belief,” he 
added, a little inconsistently. 

“ What becomes then of this, — ‘ I believe one Catholic 
and Apostolic Church’? Do you mean to keep that?” 

“Well, I mean by that, I suppose, to express my belief 
in the Church that existed previous to the imposition of 
terms of restraint which forbid our unity with it.” 

“ But does not that Church — I mean historically as a 
fact — exist still? You and I both insist that the Church 
of Rome is in this position, — the imposer of unlawful con- 
ditions ; but we can’t say there is no Church of Rome.” 

“ Yes, but I hold that the Church, as a spiritual body, is 
in abeyance till the time when the faith is restored,” said 
Maurice, who felt himself going to the wall. 

“ What you believe in is, then, a sepulchre, from which 
Christ has arisen. You must change your Article to this, 
— ‘I believe there used to be a Catholic and Apostolic 
Church, but Christ failed of his promise to be with it alway.’ 
How with the next Article, — ‘One baptism for the remission 
of sins ?’ There being no Church, what is there to baptize 
into ? And who is there to baptize you ?” 

“Really, I have never come so far as that,” said Maurice; 
“ but I thought of omitting that Article altogether, because 
of another reason. I — I — you must think me rather a 
strange being — never was baptized.” 

“ And yet you propose to act as by a commission to bap- 
tize others, — that is, to confer the membership of a Church 
which does not exist, and of which, if it did, you are not a 
member.” 

“Why, it does seem so,” said Maurice, choking down a 
little inward vexation. “But I never thought of baptism 
in that light.” 

“Pray in what light did you think of it?” It was not an 
easy question to answer. 

“ I suppose as a ceremony, or giving the name to a child; 
a religious rite, recognizing that all souls belong to God, 
our Father ; not a necessary rite, but a desirable one. If 
we say ‘Our Father,’ He will hear us witliout the formula 
of the minister.” 


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“Has He said so? Has He not said quite the contrary?’’ 

Maurice quoted the stock text : “ Neither in this moun- 
tain, nor yet in Jerusalem, &c. ; God is a Spirit, and they 
that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 

“ I suppose your spiritual and truthful intent to go to 
New York to-day would not take you there without the 
form of stepping into the cars.” 

Maurice was almost angry at this close following up; but 
natural frankness conquered. 

“Well, you may be right, theoretically; but how can I, 
with my doubts and all that, submit to it ; and if I could, 
who is to do it?” 

“ You cannot, and you ought not. If you believe with 
the Jew and the Heathen, the Church of Christ is no place 
for you.” 

Maurice flushed. “ You think, then, that I am lost eter- 
nally, and of course this could not be, unless God from 
eternity meant I should be?” 

“Who told you I thought any such thing? certainly 
nothing in my words told you so. I think you are not far 
from the kingdom. You seem to me to be honest and 
sincere, and in real earnest about these matters. I have 
talked with many a Unitarian before this, but never with 
one like you. Not that they are not honest and sincere and 
all that ; I don’t mean in that way, but in the turn of your 
thought. All that you need is to be logical. I think you 
want the truth, and the truth wants you,” said the young 
priest, holding out his hand, which Maurice took. 

“ Look here. Mister,” broke in a rough-looking man who 
had taken the seat before them, and had evidently been 
listening to their conversation, — “look here, Mister. I 
waant to know if you hold that a man’s agoin’ to hell, be- 
cause he don’t swaller all you parsons preach? I don’t 
believe there is any hell. It is all for frightenin’ folks into 
your meetin’-houses where you can get money out of ’em. 
I’m a liberal man, I am, and don’t hold to no ’raersion, 
sprinklin’, nor nothin’ of the sort. If a man does as he 
oughter, and votes the free-bill ticket, and don’t drink no 
rurn, he’s about right for this world and the next too.” 

“But suppose he does drink rum, and votes the wrong 
ticket, and is as bad a man as he can be,” said Maurice, 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


153 


who was heartily disgusted at the proposed new alliance, 
“ what do you say then ?” 

“ There wouldn’t be no such fellows if you ministers did 
your duty,” said the man. 

“ How shall we do it so as to help such things ?” said 
Maurice. 

“ Preach against ’em. Don’t preach brimstone.” 

“ Yes, but how about the men who won’t hear us — who 
never come into a church ? Even the Saviour found plenty 
who would not listen to him. What is to be for them?” 

“ Look here, I don’t believe in no hell, any w'ay you can 
fix it ; but when a man sells his children into slavery, there 
is something ought to be done about it — that’s a fact.” 

“ Well, my friend, if you think the Creator left out of His 
plans something essential, I am afraid we cannot mend the 
matter,” said the clergyman ; “ but meanwhile, if you will 
do what you believe to be right, and do nothing you think 
to be wrong, perhaps you may get some light upon the 
subject.” 

Maurice rather liked this practical way of winding up a 
controversy which further came to an end by the stopping 
of the cars at a station, where the anti-brimstone man got 
out. Another clergyman got in, a stout, elderly man, with 
sharp, keen eyes, and a brisk but genial voice. He greeted 
his young brother warmly, and then said — “Come and sit 
by me. I want to talk to you about that new Canon. The 
Bishop thinks I’m wrong, and I think that he has a notion 
that we want to tie up the laity too closely.” 

“ Excuse me a little while,” said the young priest to Mau- 
rice. “ The Doctor wants me, I see ; but we’ll meet again. 

Your ticket, I see, is for H . Shall you go further? If 

you are bound for New York, I will introduce you to the 
Doctor, who will go most of the way.” 

“No, I am bound for Broadwater.” 

“All right. We change cars at H , and I shall see 

you again. I go there too.” He slipped his card into 
Maurice’s hand, received one in exchange, and took a new 
seat. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


I T was necessary to change cars before reaching Broad- 
water. Maurice did not meet his new acquaintance again 
till they got out, in the little barn like terminus of the 
branch railway. Maurice sent on his luggage to the hotel, 
the Decatur House, and walked up with his companion. 
The twilight of a summer evening was just throwing its 
shades over the landscape, but leaving it light enough to 
see the pleasant little town. They passed by the side of a 
large brown-stone church, with Gothic windows and heavy 
buttresses, a tower capped with a temporary wooden roof, 
and a wheel-cross upon its western gable, which Maurice 
supposed to be the Episcopal Church ; and then they found 
themselves in a broad, still street, lined with elms and bor- 
dered by shrubberies. A brief walk brought them into the 
centre of the town, in front of a large three-story-house of 
stately proportions, standing on a corner. A light balcony 
ran along its front. Just above this, in the second story, 
the central window was brightly lit up. As they crossed 
the street, a group of two or three young men, carrying oars 
and other boat gear, preceded them and entered a side door 
of the dwelling. Upon the panes of the lighted window 
Maurice caught a glimpse of something like the shadow of 
a cross. There came from the room a burst of chanting — 
the words of a Psalm — the same which Maurice had heard 
in St. Polycarp’s. “ The boys must be practicing to-night,” 
said his companion ; “it is long past chapel time.” 

“What is it?” asked Maurice, in wonder. 

“Oh! it is our little chapel in the Cranmer School, if 
vou have time. I’ll take you there to-morrow. This, you 
know, is the Bishop's house. The Decatur Hotel is not far 
beyond.” 

Maurice had no further opportunity for conversation that 


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155 


evening. He had to provide for his own creature comfort, 
and then to sally out in search of the gentleman upon 
whose invitation he had come to Broadwater. He inquired, 
while at tea, the direction by which to find the house of 
IVIr. Conway, and then set out in the gloom of an almost 
ended twilight to seek it. His way led up the hill which 
rises behind the Main Street of Broadwater, and thence 
along a deeply shaded avenue, with its yellowing leaves 
already fallen here and there upon the walk. He soon 
reached the house described to him, — a large, gloomy stone 
house, which, in the starlight, appeared unusually forbid- 
ding. The feeling of uneasiness with which he recognized 
it was not lessened when he entered a vestibule scarcely less 
repellant; and, after sending up his name by the domestic, 
who opened the door, was shown into a chill and dimly 
lighted parlor. 

He was kept waiting some minutes ere Mr. Conway 
entered. The tall, thin, elderly gentleman who at last 
appeared was in entire keeping with the house. 

“Mr. Maurice?” he said, inquiringly: “I’m sorry to keep 
you waiting, sir,” he continued, upon Maurice’s affirmative 
bow; “but I’ve not very pleasant news to tell you. In 
fact, if I could have written in time, you might have been 
saved your journey. The society have decided to retain 
Benson another year. He has come out on the Fremont 
ticket without reserve; and, besides that, to tell you the 
truth frankly, there is something about the name ‘ Unita- 
rian’ which goes hardly here. I should be glad to see an 
out-and-out Parkerite here, but some of our richest pew- 
holders cling to the name of Universalist. Between you 
and me, Benson is a regular stick in the pulpit; but he’s a 
capital hand at electioneering, and will take as strong a 
stand as we could wish against the Episcopalians. And — 
and — frankly, I must say, Mr. Maurice, that — that — ^we’ve 
been written to, from Boston, that you are not quite ‘sound 
upon the goose’ in that particular: our people are very 
jealous of that. You might better be half a Catholic than 
having anything to do with those proud, exclusive folks. 
You’ve been at some expense; I suppose w'e ought to make 
that right, — say ten dollars: and, if you’ll stop over Sunday, 
and preach for us, we’ll be glad to hear you, and it won’t 
stand in your way in case Benson goes next year.” Man- 


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rice was a good deal chilled and disheartened. He politely 
declined the offered bill, which was put back into the 
owner’s pocket with the accompaniment of a very faint 
protest and an audible sigh of relief; and then, after also 
declining all propositions of hospitality, returned to the 
Hotel. 

He found, that, by going on to New York, he could, from 
there, easily reach the other alternative point of his journey, 
the society of Universalists or Unitarians in the little town 
of Norowam. So, after a vain attempt to “take his ease in 
his inn,” in the perusal of a three-days-old “New York 
Herald” in a badly lighted hall, he went to bed. The next 
morning he met, at the breakfast-table, his young clerical 
friend. As they rose from their meal, the latter said, 
“Come, go with me to chapel.” Maurice was quite ready 
to go anywhere; so they started up the wide pleasant street, 
past old-fashioned houses set well back from the grass-grown 
sidewalk, or bowered in trees, until they reached the three- 
story mansion he had passed the night before. They entered 
at the side-door, and ascended a lofty and winding stair- 
case. The whole had that indescribable air which is only 
found in houses belonging to that earlier period when there 
were in the land distinctions between gentle and simple. It 
is something quite other than that pretentiousness with 
which the successful vender of a quack balsam lavishes all 
the incongruities of architecture upon his fine new palace. 
We cannot describe it; but it is a certain sense of breadth 
and spaciousness and proportion which marks the style of 
an old family. They passed into a large vestibule. Two 
folding-doors stood open into a smaller room. At its eastern 
end, and against the window, the panes of which were 
“ frosted ” so as to exclude all view of the street, stood a 
small altar, covered by a crimson altar-cloth with a plain 
embroidered monogram in the centre. A screen, colored in 
ultramarine and topped with a cross, was behind it for a 
reredos. A simple bench ran along the wall on either side. 
Texts of Scripture were emblazoned on the walls. At the 
lower end was placed a lectern of carved wood, facing the 
east, upon which was laid a huge folio Bible. A young 
man stood there, finding the place of the daily lesson. 
Maurice had no time to examine more; for his friend, sign- 
ing to him to follow, knelt down at one of the benches; ant^ 


BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


]57 


Maurice did tlie same. AVlien he rose, the little chapel had 
begun to fill. Fourteen or fifteen young men, mostly wear- 
ing simple black stuflT gowns, like the undergraduates’ 
gowns in an English University, were either kneeling at 
their places, or else had resumed their seats and were find- 
ing the manuscript music of the chants for the day. A 
surpliced clergyman entered from an inner room, in what 
seemed to Maurice rather a quick and business-like way ; 
not irreverent, indeed, but the reverse of pompous. He 
knelt at the altar in private prayer; and then, as he rose, 
all rose with him. He broke the silence by neither sentence 
nor exhortation, but by the simple versicle, “O God! make 
speed to save us.” All answered, “ O Lord ! make haste to 
help us;” and then, kneeling, every voice united in the Con- 
fession. The Absolution and Lord’s Prayer followed. The 
former seemed to Maurice as if spoken directly to him. 
Hitherto he had been far away from the officiating priest, 
and, as it were, a spectator; now it was uttered above the 
head of him kneeling there, and he felt that it belonged to 
him also. He had never come quite so close to it, except 
by Frank’s death-bed; and then he had felt himself to be 
outside of the whole service. There was no “Venite,” but 
the Priest announced the Psalter for the day; and then all 
the voices upon his side joined with him in repeating the 
first verse of the Psalm, while the response was made in 
the same manner by those opposite. It took Maurice 
entirely by surprise, accustomed as he had been to hear only 
whispered or muttered responses in most of the Episcopal 
Churches he had visited in Boston. The sustained heartiness 
was singularly fresh and real to him. What he had fancied 
of ancient Hebrew worship seemed to be revived there. At 
the close of the Psalter came a rapid burst of choral har- 
mony in the “Gloria Patri.” He contrasted involuntarily, 
in his thought, the languidness and baldness of the chapel 
service at Cambridge. Then one of the young men stepped 
quietly to the lectern, and read a lesson from the Old Tes- 
tament. It was not over w'ell done, certainly with none of 
that studied effectiveness which he was wont to hear in the 
reading of Scripture, but simply with rather a school-boy 
manner; yet, in one or two places, Maurice was struck by 
a justness of emphasis which gave a new force to passages 
commonly slurred over. Scarcely had the reader said, “Here 
14 


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endeth the lesson,” when the students’ voices joined once 
more in the “Magnificat.” The music thrilled Maurice 
with a strange delight. It was not operatic, it was not the 
display of a hired quartette, nor did it have the drawling 
monotony of the Gregorians, which he had heard so often 
at St. Peter’s, at Rome; but it carried him along upon its 
■wings. The young man next whom he stood put into his 
hands a little printed leaf containing the words properly 
pointed for chanting; and Maurice found himself compelled 
to join in the tide of holy song, and to repeat “ My spirit 
hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” The canticle came to a 
close with the inevitable “Gloria,” which Maurice had half- 
way finished before he was aware of it; and then came the 
Creed. Maurice had begun to join in it, expecting the 
familiar Apostles’ Creed, which Unitarians contrive to 
accept under their own limitations. It was, however, the 
Nicene Symbol. Yet he could not pause to weigh its ex- 
pressions; there was no time for it; and so, being familiar 
with its phrases, since he had been studying them of late, 
he continued on. When every head was bowed at the 
name of the Adorable Son, his, too, was bent in instinctive 
yielding to the spirit of the place. The faith of the spot 
“constrained him.” 

Faith had begun to dawn : Hope was yet afar off ; but in 
her coming was to come the greatest of these, as yet not 
seen save through a glass darkly. And now, with a gesture 
of benediction, the priest turned from facing the little altar 
toward the little congregation, saying, “ The Lord be with 
you.” Maurice could not but join in the response, “ And 
with thy spirit ;” for his attention was strongly cauglit by 
the aspect of the clergyman whom he saw. The face was 
that of a man in the earlier years of middle life — a square, 
slightly massive head, the expression deeply earnest, the 
stature of middle height ; the whole man betraying in his 
restlessness, his careless pose and quick intuition, as well as by 
the tones of the rich and flexible voice, an unusual amount 
of energy and restrained power. All knelt, however, before 
Maurice could do more than take in at a single glance that 
which has been above described. The service continued in 
a series of brief petitions and responses, unfamiliar to Mau- 
rice, but evidently the daily usage of the others. He was 
sure, also, that the collects which folloAved werr, not in the 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


159 


Prayer-book. Two especially struck his faucy. It was not 
a Litany day, but these two exquisite supplications, one for 
rulers and the other for unity, seemed to him in the very 
spirit of the Prayer-book. The latter, most of all, met his 
mood — “ Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great 
danger the Church is in by our unhappy divisions ; that, 
as there is one body and one spirit, even as we are called in 
one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, 
one God and Father of us all; so may we be joined toge- 
ther in one holy bond of peace and love.” It seemed to him 
as if a tender mother had known his perplexities, and were 
praying for him. When he rose from his knees, the students 
were passing out. One or two staid to chat; the priest 
came out of an adjoining room unvested, and greeted Mau- 
rice’s friend warmly. “ So you’ve come back to see how we’re 
getting on. I’m sorry to say the Bishop is not here. He 
is expected in the morning train. We’re doing nicely this 

term, I think. By the by, have you seen ’s book on 

the Komans ? It is not a bad thing — wants scholarship, but 
it is a move out of the old rut. You keep up your German? 
How comes on Meyer?” Maurice thought him an English- 
man ; there was some very English in his hearty, emphatic 
manner and clear enunciation. His friend had made a 
movement as if to introduce Maurice to the Professor, when 
one of the students interrupted. “ Professor, do we meet 
you at ten or eleven ?” And Maurice, feeling a little in the 
way, stepped toward the door. Something was said in an 
undertone, and then his companion rejoined him. “ Shall 
we walk this morning?” he said. “Excuse me for not 
presenting you to our Professor ; but he will be engaged, 
I find, with his recitations; and you, I think, leave this 
afternoon. This way, if you will.” So he led Maurice 
up the beautiful street which leads from the Divinity 
School to the hill-top. After a moment of silence, the 
clergyman asked, “How do you like our service?” — 
“Oh, I was very much taken with it,” said Maurice; “ but 
where do you get it? for instance, that canticle, ‘My soul 
doth magnify the Lord’?” — “Oh, that is the ‘Magnificat,’ 
the song of the Blessed Virgin.” — “ Ah, yes, I see,” said 
Maurice; “a Catholic hymn translated into English — by 
whom ? Where can one find that?” — “ A certain St. laike, 
who was St. Paul’s friend, and, some think, disciple, gave 


IGO 


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it to the Catholic Church. St. Mary first uttered it. He 
recorded it, but who translated it I cannot tell you — one of 
the translators of the English Prayer-book and Bible. You 
will find it in the first chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel.” 
“ What, a Gospel of the early times ?” said Maurice ; and 
then, catching the amused look on his companion’s face, he 
said, “You don’t mean that is in the Bible?” — “Look and 
see,” said the other. Maurice colored up to the eyes, and 
then said, abruptly, “ How can you so depart from your 
Prayer-book? I thought you were tied to that.” — “You 
forget that Bishops have power to arrange services in their 
own schools as they like.” — “ Very well, I will be a Bishop, 
and have my own Cathedral to myself.” — “ Pardon me ; but 
I fear you will have it all to yourself, if you try it upon our 
Connecticut Universalists. However, don’t let me discou- 
rage you ; it is all working for us. It will help to put you 
right, if it does nobody else ; and I think I should call that a 
great gain.” — “You don’t object, then, to my using the 
Prayer-book ?” — “ Certainly not : use it all you can ; only 
you will find, probably, some dififi^culties. Making a service 
is not done in a day; ours grew.” 

Maurice found himself with many new’' facts over which 
he could not help pondering. How was it that the Church 
seemed so confident of her pedigree, so fearless in her steps, 
and yet so meek and lowly in the outward display and 
temper ? Another thing was impressed upon him very for- 
cibly. Throughout this service was kept that proper gra- 
dation between priest and people, which marks a Church 
which believes in a duly commissioned ministry, — kept as 
fully as in a public congregation. When, in his divinity 
studies, it had come to the lot of the senior class to conduct 
their services, each member had in turn to stand the fire 
of hostile, sometimes of envenomed, criticism. He himself 
remembered prayers uttered in bitterness of spirit, conscious 
that he was next to be pulled to pieces. But here was kept 
the unchanged memory of the Church’s high descent from 
Patriarchal and Levitic hierarchies, where none might 
usurp the priesthood. Though the family were one in blood, 
the first-born alone stood to minister. 

They had reached the upper street of the town, and had 
walked on in silence a little while, when Maurice stopped 
suddenly, exclaiming, “How beautiful!” It was indeed 


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161 


worthy of a pause. Through an opening in the foliage, 
there was given to view the wide landscape. Below them 
lay the town, embosomed in its leafage, while afar stretched 
the green hill-sides, dipping here and there into purple 
hollows of shadow. In the midst lay a fair reach of river, 
set like a sapphire in the steep surrounding shores. It was 
disclosed at that precise angle from which it appeared less 
like a river than like a tranquil lake. One white sail, 
swiftly skimming U23 from the unseen outlet of the gorge 
below, was in view. Then came another and another, like 
a flight of swans, graceful and gliding. The college-green 
was beside them : the buildings were of that heavy, four- 
storied factory pattern which it seems essential to bestow 
upon all American college ediflces, but with such a lawn 
and such elms as Oxford might be proud of. “And this 
was your home,” said Maurice: “I wish it had been mine.” 
“Perhaps it may yet be, — who knows? you are young,” 
said the other, “young enough to turn from the experiment, 
if it fail of renewing a Catholic Christianity under Arian 
auspices. But shall we return now ? I must see the Bishop 
when he arrives. I would take you up to see him, — I have 
a fancy he would do you lots of good, — but the Trustees are 
to meet, I believe, and I shall not see more of him than I 
have absolute need to do. I will take you to our little 
library, and I dare say you can be comfortable there.” 
Maurice found the change to the cool, still room, very 
pleasant, from the heated air without. In the alcoves, 
scenting slightly of dust, of Kussia leather, and that inde- 
finable bookish odor so dear to reading men, Maurice 
whiled away the morning. He got down a splendid vellum- 
bound copy of the first Prayer-book of King Edward VI., 
and was surprised to find therein mucli of the morning’s 
chapel service. At first, his feeling was of exultation, as 
he said to himself, “These Churchmen, as they call them- 
selves, cannot make any thing, — only inherit ;” and then it 
occurred to him how infinitely more precious was the 
simplest jewel worn as a family heir-loom than the par- 
venu’s bought diamond. “Nevertheless, we are the true 
heirs of all this,” he thought; and then he found himself a 
little in doubt as to who “we” might be. So he went about, 
dipping into various other books, — a copy of the “Chapel 
Liturgy” of the Boston Society; and also an Irvingite 


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Manual, which bewildered him ; and, finally, he settled 
down into a steady perusal of “Ward’s Ideal of a Christian 
Church,” which both fascinated and puzzled him. “What 
I want,” said he, “is not the ideal, but the reality.” 

Just then the door opened, and two gentlemen entered. 
Neither of them saw Maurice as he sat sheltered in his 
alcove. “Ah! here is what we want,” said one of them, 
“ AVilberforce on the Incarnation.” “Well, what do you 
say of him, sir?” “ I own he has nearly persuaded me that 
the Church is not invisible. I am taught here as against 
the ultra-protestant ; therefore, as it is visible, and is Christ’s 
mystical body, why must it not have unity, and therefore 
one central head ? How can separation from that head be 
other than fatal?” 

“My dear sir,” replied the other, “ ihQ proton pseudos of 
AVilberforce lies in this, — his idea of a body. The Church 
in itself is visible ; but it concerns the sphere of invisible 
things. Its unity lies in a principle, not in a forced mechan- 
ical unity with the Papacy. AVhen the Church w’as planted 
by the apostles, it contained germs of faith, worship, order 
and polity. These grew according to the life that w^as in 

them. Liturgies became a necessity, because of the sacra- 
ments. Polity w'as developed from the fact of a ministry. 
The principle of unity lay in the existence of an Apostolic 
Episcopacy. Each Bishop was an independent centre, but 
not ah independent church. AVhere there was a Bishop, 
there was the, not a. Church , — ubi JEpiscopiis ibi Ecclesia; 
its members many, its principle of unity single.” “ AVhere 

then, my dear sir, was its controlling headship ? to whom 
was each Bishop responsible?” “To the Head of the 
Church Himself.” “ How was that responsibility enforced?” 
“ By the whole Church acting in accordance with its sense 
of divine presence. The Papacy is a mechanical inven- 
tion, which practically denies the divine institution of the 
Church, because of lack of faith in the apostolic promise, 
‘ Lo 1 I am with you alway.’ So long as the Church is one, 
schism is simply suicide, self-excommunication.” 

“But, Professor,” said the other, “ why is not that Con- 
gregationalism?” “Because Congregationalism holds not 
to the divine origin, but to the self-origination of the Church 
on the part of the laity.” “AVell, Presbyterianism, then.” 
“ No : that holds to the power of the ministerial body, iwi 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 163 

to an organic Church. The one is the lay, the other the 
ecclesiastical, half-truth, of the real condition of the 
Church.” 

Maurice regarded the two speakers. One was a man of 
middle life, with curling hair, and his handsome head 
carried rather haughtily ; his voice full and rich, with some- 
thing in its swelling intonation of that utterance peculiar 
to Harvard. The other was younger, wore glasses, and had 
a slight stoop, but was not especially noticeable in other 
respects. He looked too old to be a student, yet he wore 
the black gown of the school. Maurice wondered who 
they were. The Professor continued : “ Don’t let Wilber- 
force’s brilliant theorizing carry you away. The Church 
has need of central principles, not of centralizing institu- 
tions. Suppose you take this theory of the Archdeacon’s, 
and try to meet it, as your next exercise with me.” The 
student looked pleased, took the book, and presently with- 
drew, drawing his gown up over his rounded shoulders as 
he went. 

The Professor caught sight of Maurice, looked at him for 
a moment, and then went up to him. “Excuse me, sir; 
but are not you Mr. Maurice of Harvard?” “I am, sir; 
and you?” “The Rev. Charles Wentworth, at your ser- 
vice, sir. I remember your face quite well. I met you at 
Dr. Hooper’s in Boston. Hooper was a classmate of mine. 
Are you coming to our Divinity School?” “No, sir. My 
theological studies are over, at least as far as Divinity 
Schools are concerned. I am a graduate of the school at 
Cambridge, and came to Broadwater to preach for the Uni- 
versalists here ; but there is, it seems, no vacancy.” “ But 
you are no Universalist?” “No, I can hardly tell what I 
am. 1 am looking for a field to find room to plant some 
notions of my own ; and I find here some things which, I 
must say, attract me very much.” He held out “Ward’s 
Ideal” as he spoke. The Professor glanced at it with a 
half-sigh. “ That book has upset many a fine fellow,” he 
said ; “ but, really, I don’t see how to caution you against 
it. Your eclecticism must be your defence for the present. 
And yet you are seeking the ideal of a Christian Church.” 
“ Yes, sir; and your Church attracts me strangely,- -attracts 
and repels me. I like its clear sense of its own position ; 
but then its assumption to be the one right thing, and every- 


164 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


body else wrong, I am not prepared to give in to. Why 
cannot men do as they please?” Maurice was singularly 
constituted in mind. He was for ever on the opposition 
benches. Among Unitarians he was always insisting upon 
the divine authority of the Church; while, with every 
Churchman he met, he w^as ready to stand up for the prin- 
ciple of the larger liberty of unqualified sectarianism. 

The Professor answered not as he had expected. “Yes: 
we have indeed a narrow way of putting things, — a great 
littleness, so to speak, in magnificent trifles. But you will 
find the germinal ideas of the holy Catholic Church in us ; 
and therefore, when we can throw off this load of rubbish, 
which the timidity and torpor of many of us have a holy 
horror of seeing touched, these will begin to grow. But 
still, as a Unitarian, I do not see what we can do for you. 
You say you are one?” 

“ Yes : that is, I hold that the Church has, in the Nicene 
Creed, imposed unscriptural terms. I said to my friend who 
brought me here, that I believed Christ to be the Son of 
God, not God the Son. Perhaps I was wrong in being so 
positive : I am willing to receive, but not to profess, the 
latter point. I think it is unlawfully required.” 

“ My dear sir,” said the Professor, his eye kindling and 
his noble head thrown back as he warmed to controversy, 
— “ my dear sir, in the primitive Church the Creed was 
given as a germ, first in the profession of St. Peter, ‘Thou 
art the Christ then, when it was necessary for the faith to 
be professed beyond the limits of Messianic teaching, and 
these words no longer conveyed distinct ideas, it was en- 
larged into the formula of baptism, — Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost. You admit that the apostles were monotheists. 
They must have taught the Gentiles to believe in one God.” 
— “Of course.” — “Yes, of course, monotheism was a neces- 
sity ; it lay at the very door of a renunciation of the Pagan 
Creeds ; yet the Apostles baptized in the name of Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost. Did they, then, teach three Gods?” 
— “ No, I suppose not.” — “ Very well, then. Here is a germ 
of a theological position. To the Gentiles they preached 
the invisible Father, revealed and manifested in the Son, 
and witnessed to by the Holy Ghost. Here are three per- 
sonalities surely. Now, when controversy came, — and you 
must study the Gnostic heresies to understand the bearing 


BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


165 


of this, — comes also St. John, in the last days of the Apos- 
tolic Church, and writes that the Logos (the Gnostic name, 
you know, for Jesus Christ) was with God in the beginning, 
and was God. 

“ Later on, Arius institutes new denials ; and a new defini- 
tion is required, of course extra-scriptural, since no apostle 
survived to write a new Scripture. The sense of certain 
terms had become ambiguous. The Church does not change 
her faith, because she makes these certain. She only ren- 
ders explicit that which was implicit before.” 

Maurice was silent. He knew not what to answer. “You 
will come back here,” said Wentworth, “some day, I am 
well assured ; and, when you do, you must find me out. My 

parish is St. Andrew’s, in . I shall always be glad to 

see you.” 

That same afternoon Maurice returned to Hartford ; and 
then, after a day or two in that pleasant rural city with a 
college friend, he took the boat for New York. 


CHAPTER XV. 


M aurice left Hartford, by the New-York boat, upon 
. the Monday afternoon succeeding his fruitless visit to 
Broadwater. In spite of his reminiscences of European 
scenery, he was yet delighted with the little-prized but 
lovely passage of the Lower Connecticut. It brought to 
mind the Danube, and yet in all unlikeness ; for nature 
never offers the wine of her beauty in twin goblets, but 
every chalice is wrought with its special device. The 
steamer — so different from the little toiling European river- 
craft — swept onward like a floating castle, contemptuous of 
tide or rapid, cleaving the fair wave and parting the green 
reflections of the hills, past quiet nooks and winding glens 
luxuriant wdth foliage ; the light birchen leaves, the bright 
maple groves, the darker cedar thickets, and bristling oaks, 
with fair lawnlets of cushioned meadow, lying beneath. 
White and brown farmsteads, new and old, dotted the hill- 
sides here and there. Brisk and busy landings, often with 
huge skeletons of building ships beside them, occurred at 
every few^ miles ; and all this landscape slumbered beneath 
the warm, hazy sunshine. By and by this began to change, 
— and into glorious crimson and gold, and rich apple-green, 
flamed and faded the West. The bell rang for supper, as 
the boat glided out between the low salt marshes of the 
river mouth; and, when the night wind began to grow chill, 
Maurice was ready to leave his mingled dream of memory 
and fancy, and go below to the substantial matter-of-fact of 
meal-time. At the long table he found his place between a 
thin, pale young gentleman in rusty black, and a heavy, 
robust man of middle life, who, he felt, might be a country 
schoolmaster, a lawyer of local fame and limited autocracy, 
or a prosperous shopkeeper of an inland town. After the 
business of refection had been silently and studiously (n )t 
166 


BRVAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


1G7 


to say swiftly) transacted, a disposition for talk became 
manifest. That is, men turned from sausages, Indian-meai 
bread, and oysters, inquiring glances toward each other’s 
faces. When the clerk, and the attendant gray-haired 
negro who occupied the important post of head-waiter, had, 
with a large roll of dollar bills stuck betw’een their fore and 
middle Ungers, circled the table to the low refrain of 
“Tickets, gentlemen; supper tickets, if you please,” the 
desire to converse began to blossom out into meteorological 
and wayfaring remarks ; but presently the elder neighbor 
of Maurice threw out a feeler: “Are either of you gentle- 
men going to attend the Bible Society meeting in the city?’’ 
— “No,” said the young man, “1 am going to see Professor 

, of the General Theological School, about missionary 

work at the West.” — “I am of opinion,” interrupted a 
solemn-looking gentleman opposite, with a thin, smooth- 
shaven face, and very decided cheek-bones, “ that there is 
but one thing which can save the West from Catholics and 
infidelity : it is the general distribution of the Bible. We 
do not want missionaries, we want colporteurs.” (He pro- 
nounced the word “ coalporters,” but everybody appeared 
to understand him.) “ Don’t know about that/’ replied the 
first speaker : “ I’m not a wonderful Bible man myself, but 
still I don’t know that leaving them round in all sorts of 
places is the way to make people think more of them. What 
do you say ?” he added, turning to Maurice and the other. 
“ The Bible is the only source of our faith ; and by faith ye 
are saved,” said the theological student. “ P’raps there’s to 
be more saving than your Saybrook platform will hold,” 
replied the other : “ however, that’s not the question.” — 
“The American Bible Society have done a magnificent 
work,” said their vis-d-vis before described. “ They have 
placed a copy of the precious volume in every house, in all 
hotels and steamboats and railroad stations. Ah-h ! it is a 
no-o-ble work, sir.” — “ It is that very thing which leads, I 
fear,” said Bryan, “ to the greater irreverence. When the 
Bible was daily read in the Churches, as at the Reforma- 
tion, it was listened to and respected: how is it now?” 

A listener, who sat silently by, tipped back his chair, made 
a long arm toward the other table, and picked up the Bible 
lying there ; and, without a word, slipped it down into the 
midst of the group. They opened it: scurrilous, even 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


obscene scribbling covered the fly-leaves. They turned 
over the printed matter ; marginal dra^vings ; underscoring 
of all the words which the stricter usage of our days has 
banished from speech, and grossly infidel, not to say blas- 
phemous, foot-notes, showed the value of the experiment of 
Bible distribution. “You see,’' said Maurice, quietly. Two 
red spots came out upon the knobs of the prominent cheek- 
bones opposite. The bystander Avho had taken the Bible 
from the other table drew a pack of cards from his pocket : 
“ Any gentleman want to take a hand at Euchre?” said he; 
at which two of the company rose and hurried off as if the 
pack had been a lighted shell. Maurice laughed, but with 
a good-natured negative also rose. The elder man at his 
side gave a wistful glance at the cards, then a look at the 
face of the proposer of the game. Something seemed to 
appear therein which moved his bump of caution ; for he 
said, “ No, thank ye ; I’ll go on deck and have a cigar. 
Come up, sir,” he said to Maurice ; “perhaps you’ll take one 
too, it’s a fine night.” As they emerged on the upper deck, 
the man turned to Maurice. “ I’ve no scruples about card- 
playing, but I don’t play with everybody I meet. I don’t 
know what you think about the matter — I should judge 
you wasn’t a professor?” — “No, sir,” said Maurice, quite 
innocently; “I was offered a place in a Western College, 
but I didn’t fancy it.” — “No, no; I mean a professor of 
religion — a church member, you know.” — “ Oh,” said Mau- 
rice, “ if that is it, I suppose I am ; that is, I am a minister, 
a Unitarian minister.” — “ Well, I thought there was some- 
thing about you not just like one of them East-Windsor 
chaps. And where are you going in this part of the world, 
if I may ask? Settled anywhere?” — “Yes and no,” said 
Maurice. “ I am partly engaged to try a church in the 
town of Norowam. It has been a Universalist society, but 
has gotten over that notion. I believe I am to say nothing 
at all on that subject, but just to preach liberal Christianity.” 
“ Then I shall come and hear you, for I live in Norowam. I’m 
not a member, but I have been to your church and like it ; 
and, from the way you put down them Bible fellows at tea- 
time, I think I should like you, too. There is one thing I’m 
going to tell you. I’ve tried various churches in Norowam, 
and the Episcopal among the rest. I stuck there longest of 
all — got a pew there yet — but I gave up because they 


BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


1G9 


wanted me to have the children baptized. Old Dr. Donne 
— he’s a good old man, he is, one of the best sort of men — 
was at me forever about it. I was at his church, one day, 
when a lot of children was brought to be christened — little, 
squalling things they were ; and for every baby had to be 
a lot of godmothers and godfathers, as they called them, to 
make the promises. Now, that struck me as just so much 
humbug. What right had them folks to make promises to 
bind that baby? What right had they to say what the 
child should believe? And then for the doctor to make a 
prayer saying that these children were regenerated, just 
because he had sprinkled a little water over them — that was 
more than I could swallow ! I don’t mind hearing prayers 
read out of a book ; for, between you and me, there’s a 
good many ministers gets a going in the praying line, and 
don’t know when nor where to stop. I haven’t no objection 
to white gowns — as I told the Baptist minister, it is better 
than ragged elbows — and I like singing chants ; but when I 
see children growing up half of them and choosing for them- 
selves, right against their fathers’ and mothers’ ways, I know 
it is no use making church-members of them at six weeks old. 
There’s them that experiences religion, and gets immersed ; 
I’ve nothing to say about that. There’s them that is sprin- 
kled ; and that’s all very well if they know what they’re a 
doing of ; and we — well, we take it by profession. I never 
tried it, but my wife has, and I never had nothing to say ; but 
this baby religion is only fit for babies.” — “ I am not so sure 
of it,” replied Maurice. “ We do many things for children 
which they cannot see the good of, which still are very good 
for them. If I adopt a child, I make a different lot in life 
for it than it would have had. If it is a beggar out of the 
streets or from a foundling hospital, it certainly gets a chance 
to become something which it would not have done. But 
the sponsors, as you say, do seem very like a form.” — 
“ Worse than that ; don’t you see they make the child think 
it has promised ? and so it grows up sort of bound to one 
Church, when, if it had been left free to itself, it might have 
tried a dozen.” — “ But,” said Maurice, “ If there was only 
one Church — and that is what baptism seems to mean — and 
if the promises are what the child ought to make, what harm 
is there ?” — “ Why, you see, suppose the child breaks the 
promise, somebody’s got to answer for it. Catch me going 
15 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


bail for a young one’s good behaviour !” — “ But,” still ob- 
jected Bryan, fighting for what he had never thought to 
defend, “ but, supposing you did feel that you had gone bail, 
as you say, for a child, and should try to make it do right, 
as a very sacred duty ; should take an interest in it, and set 
it a good example, and teach it good things, and be its 
grown-up friend and helper, praying for it and all that — 
why wouldn’t it be good for the child ?” — “ Oh, but nobody 
ever does that! It’s just hocus-pocus and formalism ; and 
then,” coming back to the old point, like one who felt in- 
stinctively where his strength lay, “ the child mightn’t 
choose your Church.” — “ Well, ought there to be Churches 
to choose from ? I wish, for my part, that they were all 
one.” — “No, that wonH do, no how you can fix it. Men is 
of different sorts ; some needs hell-fire to keep them straight, 
and some needs Methodist shoutings, and some needs a kind 
of cheerful religion. Let a man have what he likes, I say. 
You ain’t a going to preach baptism up — are you?” 

“ Oh, no!” said Maurice: “I only wanted to hear what 
you had to say. I expect to preach liberal Christianity, 
and I confess I do not see much practical probability of a 
union of all churches in one. 

“ But tell me about Norowam. What sort of a society 
shall I find?” “ Middlin’ small, but good. There’s a pros- 
pect that lots of city folks may come there summers. The 
Episcopalians have a big church, and the rich folks. The 
Baptists is split up. There’s the old Congregationalists, — 
and they’ve split too ; and one half has gone off to be 
Presbyterians, — got a real smart fellow too. They are 
mostly the new city folks, — the old ones stick to their church 
on the green ; and then the Methodists are quite plenty. 
The Congregationalists have just quarrelled with their man : 
They’ve had — lem me see — five men in the last twelve 
years, — and every one gone off mad. We have only a little 
church, and our folks ain’t rich. But what we want is a 
smart young man, like yourself, to go into society and pick 
up the young folks, — the girls especially, — and give pop’lar 
lectures, and write in the magazines, and so on. You’ll do, 
I guess, first rate ; and I shall tell our folks so. You know 

anybody in New York?” “I preach for Dr. , next 

Sunday, in his new church in Avenue.” “All right! 

maybe some of us’ll be down to hear you. And now,” said 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


171 


he, tossing his cigar over the vessel’s side, “I’ll turn in. 
Good-night.” Maurice went to his state-room, and read 
over, before he slept, the Baptismal Service for infants in 
his Prayer-book, It certainly was both plain and consist- 
ent, only utopian. If it were to stand, where, sure enough, 
was the child’s liberty? And then he fell to musing upon 
that liberty, — whether, after all, any great good was to be 
gained by it. The one thing seemed to be, the loss of unity 
in the Church : there was the trouble. The baptismal office 
made no provision for that. So, undressing, he began to 
consider the vexed question of the unity of the Church, and 
— woke with the sun shining into his state-room window, 
and the cheery noises of the New York docks sounding in 
his ear. 

It was rather a dull week for Bryan in New York. Dr. 

for whom he was to preach, was at his country-seat; 

and New York, in September, is not an enlivening place of 
abode. There are picture shops, and book-stores, and the 
old Dtisseldorf Gallery was still existent; this, for a man 
who had spent months in the glorious corridors of Dresden, 
and to whom every corner of the Borghese, Corsini, and 
Pamphili-Doria palaces was familiar, was certainly not an 
absorbing delight. The thought occurred to him to try and 
find the church where Ellen Winrow was baptized. He in- 
quired at his hotel for churches where was a daily service. 
He was promptly told of Trinity and Trinity Chapel ; but 
no one seemed to know of any others. “ Opera opens next 
week, and you’ll get capital music there, sir,” said the 
“ gentlemanly and obliging public functionary” who used to 
be called a clerk, and who presided over the hotel register. 
However, Maurice did ramble by the doors of a little church, 
the beauty of which attracted him, and the entrance of 
which he found open on a week-day. He entered, and found 
service going on. A school of parish children in dark 
hoods and neat calico dresses, cloth caps and gray tweed 
suits, — according to sex ; and a score, perhaps, of other 
worshippers, all ladies except one meek country minister, 
who, now and then, responded in the wrong place. The 
clergyman officiating was old, white-haired, and with 
a sweet, benignant face, which reminded him very forcibly 
of Ellen’s description. He waited almost impatiently 
for the close of the prayers, and then followed the clergy- 


172 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


man into the vestry, to find him just putting off liia 
surplice. He put the question somewhat incoherently 
and abruptly, but was answered with all gentleness. “ Do 
you remember the year of the baptism you speak of?” 
Maurice did not, — could only, after some hesitation, gues<5- 
The Rector unlocked a press, took down the huge register, 
and began to read. Maurice was astonished at the number 
of baptisms recorded. Page after page was traversed by 
that patient finger, until, with a sigh, Maurice was about to 
own that the dates had been reached on either side of all 
possibility of the event, and to give up the search, when the 
rector suddenly paused, and looked up with this question : 
“ Was not Mrs. Howard, the Rev. Mr. Howard’s wife, — she 

was Letty , then, — one of the witnesses?” Maurice 

endeavored to recall Ellen’s story: “Yes, I think so,” he 
said. “Ah! I have it, then: here it is, left blank, you see, 
except the Christian name, Ellen, the age, and my signa- 
ture. Mrs. Howard has the certificate: it was to be filled 
up here afterwards; but there were some family reasons for 
entering no name, I think. How^ard was to let me know.” 
“ The reasons can exist no longer,” said Maurice; “she rests 
with her family beneath the Atlantic. I came to see the 
font and the church where she was baptized.” “You are a 
relative? No! I see, I see,” said the good clergyman, a 
tenderness coming into his voice, and he pressed Maurice’s 
hand : “ come this way,” and he led him back into the choir 
of the church. “Here is the font; she knelt just here,” he 
said; “poor child, poor child! Stay here as long as you 
like ; and, when you incline to come, follow that passage 
from the vestry, and it will lead you to my study, and I 
will let you out.” He turned away, and left Maurice alone 
in the church. 

There is something very impressive to a thoughtful mind 
in the silence of a church upon a w^eek-day. Even the ugliest 
New England edifice, “meeting-house,” from underpinning 
to weathercock, cannot wholly thrust from its doors the 
staidness of the Sunday atmosphere. Nor can even the 
smug and perking pretentiousness of the modern “audito- 
rium,” where people meet to hear sermons and Sunday 
operatics, — all sham and upholstery though it be, — alto- 
gether be made to seem like another place. But a true 
church is a holy spot; one where, but for the evil shame of 


BRYAN 3IAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


173 


being caught, we could gladly linger and pray. This was a 
true church, — stone walls, wainscotted below with oak, 
pierced by narrow lancet windows filled with deep and 
rich-hued glass; carved oaken stalls; and, behind the altar, 
a stately and beautiful canopied reredos. Upon the holy 
table was set upright an open Bible. The font was of 
white marble with sculptured panels. The eyes of the 
young man filled with blinding tears as he looked upon it. 
He seemed to see kneeling there that sweet figure, so simple 
and childlike, with her earnest face, and the smooth brown hair 
folded above the fair forehead. Upon that spot he felt that he 
could not kneel. He went apart into one of the open seats, 
and bent his knee, and bowed his head, overweighted with 
the suppression of a long, long sorrow. Yet, in the tumult 
of his thoughts, he could not pray. He could only wipe 
away the tears, and keep down the strong laboring of his 
bosom. At length peace came to him; at least the resigna- 
tion with which one can meet the inevitable. He rose and 
left the church. He found the old Rector in his library. 
With a very gentle smile he welcomed Maurice, and bade 
him to a seat. “Do you want to say anything to me?” he 
said, “you know it is my office to hear and to help all 
troubles; and every young man is my son, since I have 
none after the flesh.” Maurice, moved by a sudden im- 
pulse, told him his whole story. Tears were upon the good 
old man’s cheeks ere the recital was ended. “My son, you 
have indeed had your grief early; but whom the Lord 
loveth he chasteneth. You have still one espousal to look 
forward to, if your faith to your lost love does not change: 
you can, at the same font, take the same vows.” — “Perhaps 
— perhaps I may,” and Maurice rose sadly; “but not now.” 
— “In His good time — in His good time, as the Lord will,” 
said the old man, holding out his hand. “Good by. God 
bless you, and bring you aright!” 

It was a great change to the church of Dr. , in 

which Maurice found himself on the Sunday morning next. 
There was a thin congregation, made up out of the slender 
remains of the two Unitarian Societies not out of town for 
the summer, and a few strangers from the hotels, There 
was an audible rustle, and looks of disappointment were 
exchanged from pew to pew, when the doctor appeared 
upon the pulpit-platform followed by a stranger who wore 


174 


BKYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


the black gown of the preacher. One or two who sat near 
the door slipped quietly out. Everything about the edifice 
was oppressively new and citified, — the freshest of varnish 
and smartest of upholstery. Pulpit and pews alike seemed 
to say, “Look at us, we cost ever so much!” Nor did the 
service do much to restore the devotional feeling. After 
the brief introductory prayer, the doctor read a Psalm, or 
rather a composition of Psalms, for a chant. It was read 
in rather a studied manner, and at its close the doctor 
looked hard at the choir gallery opposite. There was no 
response from either organ or singers. It was evident that 
they were not inclined to be “at home” before the season 
began. So, opening the great Bible, he read part of a 
chapter, and then gave out a hymn, which was sung by the 
two or three voices who were acting as temporary choir. 
Then followed the long prayer, into which was infused a 
delicate dash of politics, not strong enough to offend, but 
gratifying to those, who, from frequent pilgrimages “over 
the ferry,” had become unable to relish their worship with- 
out a mundane flavoring. Then two verses more of a 
hymn were sung, and the pulpit was clear to Maurice, who, 
from his elevation, could see the choir depart, and the 
organist, who had to stay for the concluding voluntary, 
settle himself in an easy chair, with a manifest novel in 
his hand. The doctor objected to Sunday papers because 
they would rustle scandalously, and, after a long fight, 
carried his point; but novels were permissible, provided 
the leaves were cut beforehand. 

Maurice made, of course, the beginner’s blunder of 
pitching his voice too high; and consequently delivered his 
sermon with great effort, and not much effect. Still, he 
had the satisfaction of seeing some people rouse up in their 
pews, and listen ; and the doctor, a most amiable man, com- 
plemented him very highly upon his maiden effort. There 
was no other service in the church during the day; but it 
was a hot Sunday, and Maurice remained quietly in his 
hotel. If he had known, that, not many squares off, he 
might have heard his friend Gardiner preach, perhaps his 
history might have come to a speedier end than it now seems 
likely to do. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

I T was noon when Maurice alighted at the little station 
of Norowani. He found himself in a pleasant village, 
with broad tree-shaded streets. In the centre, the old 
Puritan meeting-house stood, sentinel-like, on the green, 
confronting all comers with an interrogative look out of its 
many windows. To the right of it was the hotel to which 
he w'as driven, — whither the wdllof his hackman conducted 
him. He found, of course, no extraordinary luxury, but 
the promise of pleasant social entertainment in the presence 
of several agreeable-looking hoarders. He went forth after 
dinner to find the house of his possible parishioner, to whom 
he had a letter. He w^as not over sanguine of success, but, 
to his surprise, was most cordially welcomed by the manag- 
ing man of the little society, — he who, to use his own words, 
mainly runs the concern. It was his business partner whom 
Maurice had met on board the steamboat. He was told 
that everything had been arranged. “The fact is, we 
thought it best,” said the manager, “not to have you come 
preaching on trial. It sets folks up to think they can find 
fault. It is better just to have a few who dooz know su’thin’ 
about it to attend to it: they’re just as much pleased in the 
end. Some of us went to New York last Sunday — awful hot, 
warn’t it? — a purpose to hear you; and we’re only too glad 
to have you come. We have made an effort, and I think 
we can raise nine hundred or a thousand for you, which, as 
you’re a bachelor, will be better than we’ve ever done be- 
fore. ‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘we couldn’t expect to get you 
under fifteen hundred;’ but says I to him, says I, ‘’Tain’t 
no kind o’ use talking that to our people. There i^ the. pew-- 
rents and the letting of the parsonage, that’s so much ; and, 
when that’s done, every cent of it has got to come out of 
private pockets;’ and says I, ‘when Mr. Maurice has been 

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BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


with US a year, he’ll know how many of them there is as 
has got much in ’em.’ But you mustn’t be discouraged, in 
case you was thinking of getting married by and by. The 
town is full of summer visitors from the city, and you are 
just the one to draw. Only you mustn’t leave us in the 
lurch, and go off to a city parish, as soon as the summer is 
over.” 

Maurice was too full of the novelty and pride of his 
position to do other than to assent cordially to this proposi- 
tion. He was flattered at the estimate put upon him, and 
very glad to get to work; and he walked forth with his 
entertainer to see his future church. It was small, but cen- 
trally situated; in fact, it watched the meeting-house on the 
green with the air of a Skye terrier bristling up at a great 
indolent Newfoundlander. To this look, its high-pitched 
roof between two wooden turrets, which were like pocket- 
telescopes, contributed not a little. In its gable was a 
pointed window, with Tudor mouldings; and along the 
eaves ran wooden battlements. Its capacity for seating was 
about three hundred. Maurice surveyed it inside and out 
with the pleasure, and yet with the dignity, proper to one 
assuming his first charge. Then he went to tea at his new 
parishioner’s house, where he was received with great defer- 
ence; but evidently the young people were slightly oppressed 
by his presence. So, after tea, his host having to “go to 
the store,” Maurice excused himself, and started for a walk 
around the village. 

He followed up the course of the stream from which the 
village takes its name, — the Norowam. He crossed a small 
bridge, leaning over the railing, while he lingered, to enjoy 
the lovely little vista which opened up and down the stream, 
— tall trees bending over it, even to the edge of the green, 
turfy banks, and the shallow, rippling current showing 
beneath, here and there, the mossy stones. Then he passed 
on, and came round by a circuit to a grave-yard, in front 
of which were the unfinished walls of an edifice manifestly 
ecclesiastical. It was of rough native granite, with smooth 
brown-stone dressings in the door-ways and arches of the 
windows. Maurice wandered around it, till at one corner 
he found' a stone with a floriated cross cut into it. Beneath 
this was the name in Gothic letters, — 


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177 


St* 

Tlie interior was strewn with fragments of stone ; neither 
roof nor floor were yet begun. 

The bells just then began to ring for evening service, for 
it was Wednesday night. Maurice gave a glance into the 
little neglected-looking grave-yard, with its rough and tum- 
bling stone wall ; marked the overgrown, untidy aspect it 
presented ; and then the idea came to him, that now would 
be a capital opportunity to see his ministerial rivals, or 
some of them. So he followed the tolling bells back into 
the main street. He passed one fresh-looking edifice; but 
it was unlighted. When he reached the old Puritan meet- 
ing-house, though its bell went, its doors seemed closed. 
He asked a passer-by where the service was to be held. 
“ Prayer-meetin’ in the lecture-room, over to the new 
church.” So Maurice, catching sight of a Gothic tower 
and spire through the trees, followed the toll of its 
bell. He found it standing rather apart, among pleasant 
villa residences, and in front of a triangular green, around 
which were set a few straggling elm-slips; and in the centre 
a bare spot marked the play-place of the village boys. 
The church w’as a large building, wooden, with plenty of 
battlements,, pinnacles, and buttresses. Its proportions, 
however, were not unpleasing. Maurice looked in through 
the arched door-ways. He saw that the lamps were lighted 
upon a heavy desk and pulpit of dark wood. Each stood 
distinct, and between and behind them appeared the chan- 
cel and chancel-rail. He was struck with the length of the 
church, made more apparent by the few worshippers who 
were scattered here and there. “Well, this is coming to 
headquarters of the enemy,” he said to himself, as he quietly 
slipped into a side pew. When the bell ceased tolling, the 
church was about a quarter filled. Some families appeared 
in full force, coming in in quite a compact body, and filling 
two or three pews contiguous, while in other places single 
church-goers sat alone. The clergyman entered by a 
narrow, arched door, on ' the side of which was a monu- 
mental tablet, the black lettering of which Maurice in vain 
attempted to read. There were two ministers ; one of them 
a large, elderly man, with a full rotund flice, and gray hair. 
It was a face with a grave, reverent expression, with lines 


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which might either harden to sternness or soften to sweet- 
ness. The other was evidently young, quite young. His 
hair, quite long and with something of a wave, was very 
fine and silken, and brushed back from his brow. It fell 
around the smooth oval of a face whose perfect features, in 
their almost womanish perfection, had a marked likeness to 
that beautiful ideal which the Italian painters have chosen 
for Saint John the Divine. The impression of the face was 
rather that of purity than of power. The service was read 
by the elderly clergyman, with that quiet, natural impres- 
siveness which belongs to a class passing away, — the noble, 
hard-working, unpretending, but earnest and really most 
able men, who belonged to the Church’s militant days, 
before ambitious youths were taught to intone badly, and 
to vindicate their apostolicity by murder of the Queen’s 
English. There was no organ or chanting ; but a metrical 
psalm was given out at the close of the evening prayer, 
and the tune set by one of the congregation. It was . sung 
rather falteringly till the young clergyman rose from his 
knees, after his private devotions, and threw into it the sup- 
port of a voice evidently of high culture and great natural 
sw'eetness. As the “ Gloria” ceased, he came forward to 
the rail of the narrow chancel, and began his lecture. He 
announced no text, but went at once to the subject, — that 
of Confirmation. After running briefly over the warrant 
for the rite, its institution by the apostles in Samaria, and 
then making a few citations from the Fathers, he began to 
speak of what it was, — the ratifying and confirming of the 
Baptismal vows on the part of the candidate, and the rati- 
fying and confirming to the candidate of the Divine pledges 
made in Holy Baptism. Maurice listened attentively. Here, 
amid the fluent and apparently commonplace remarks of the 
young clergyman, was struck out a thought which to him 
was full of importance. The mystery of infant baptism, 
the meaningless formalism, as it had seemed to him, of the 
sponsors, was all at once put in a new light. The promise 
by the infant was then real, — only in abeyance for a season. 
But, with this, the promise to the infant, — spiritual regen- 
eration, was not that also confirmed? He followed the 
simple words, so lacking in argumentative arrangement, so 
full of broad and positive assertion, half rebelling against 
them. He saw, or thought he saw, points missed, and loop- 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


179 


holes left for question ; but, in spite of this, the sincere, 
eager earnestness, and the clear, assured sense, on the 
part of the speaker, of his position, was telling upon 
him. Scornfully he tried to throw it off : but the while 
there was wrought out, clearer and clearer, the convic- 
tion that the young Minister was speaking with some- 
thing back of him ; that he had a firm, definite theory of 
the relation of the baptized child : and with this the 
thought came, that this theory was not unreasonable. 
Holding the Prayer-book in his hand, and reading passages 
of the service, and then turning to the Catechism and Col- 
lects for corroborating testimony, the preacher showed that 
he was teaching the familiar doctrine of his Church. Then, 
with a fire which Maurice had hardly suspected in him, he 
closed with a direct appeal to those present to come forward 
at the Bishop’s approaching visitation. 

Maurice rose from his place, after the benediction, and 
went up to read the memorial tablet. It told him, that the 
Rev. Adoniram Griffith, D. D., had been for fifty years the 
Rector of the parish, of which he was the founder. Maurice 
turned to go, as the sexton was putting out the lights. Two 
or three ladies were conversing in low tones in the porch. 
The younger clergyman of St. Jude’s — for that was the 
church’s name — came hastily down the aisle and greeted 
them. One of them turned to reply as Maurice passed ; and, 
in the vestibule lamplight, Maurice found himself face to 
face with Maud de Forrest. An exclamation of surprise 
broke from his lips, and, at the same moment, a smile and 
blush of recognition came over her face. That face was 
more beautiful than when he had first seen it. She held out 
her hand in greeting. “ How did you come here ?” she said. 
“ Why, this is to be my home ; I am now a minister.” 
She glanced at his straight-cut coat — which Maurice had 
ordered of a church tailor of undoubted orthodoxy — and 
his white neck-cloth, and said, “What! of the Church? 
Why were you not in the chancel to-night?” — “ No, not this 
Church ; I did not mean that ; but a minister in this town 
— Norowam. I am preaching at the Universalist Church ; 
but you see I can come here with pleasure, and,” slightly 
bowing to the young clergyman, Maurice added, “ with 
profit.'* — “Mr. Maurice,” said Maud, “let me introduce 
to you my cousin, the Rev. Alfred Winthrop. We met Mr. 


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Maurice, Alfred, in Rome — uncle and I.” They walked 
down the street together. Miss de Forrest chatting with more 
animation than formerly, asking and answering questions of 
their common travels, while Winthrop walked silently on 
the other side. Two other ladies of the party were just 
before, but Winthrop made no effort to join them. Maurice 
half suspected that he was considered de trop by one of the 
party. The fact was, that Winthrop was only too tired, 
after preaching, to care to use his voice in the night air. 
They reached one of the villa-like dw’ellings of the town, 
where the ladies went in. “ I shall be happy to have you 
call,” said Miss de Forrest, as she held out her hand at part- 
ing. The two young men turned to go. “ Where are you 
stopping?” said Winthrop. — “I am at the hotel.” — “So am 
I ; this, then, is our way.” They walked on together. “ We 
shall see more of each other, I suspect,” said Maurice ; “ let 
me tell you who I am.” But his confidence did not waken 
any very eager response. The other listened courteously to 
his story, but, when it was finished, simply replied, “ I am 
not here permanently ; only assisting the Rev. Cyril Donne, 
the Rector of St. Jude’s, while the regular assistant is abroad. 
I shall be happy to see you at my rooms, which are, like 
yours, in the hotel, when you are disposed to call. But I 
am quite busy just now% and have little leisure for visiting till 
after the Bishop has been here. I w'ould ask you in to-night, 
but am very tired, and must beg you to excuse me.” 

Maurice bade him good-night, and sat awhile on the 
veranda, thinking over the day. “ Winthrop ! Winthrop ! 
a Boston name, and he has the Beacon-street air ; but he is 
too young to be a Harvard man before my time, or I should 
have seen him.” The fact was, Winthrop was of Trinity. 
And so ended Bryan’s entry into Norowam. At first, Mau- 
rice, though they met at meal-times, saw very little of his 
new acquaintance. He was speedily made aware, by his 
manager, that he must get acquainted with his flock ; and 
was taken about indefatigably, to be introduced to the Dar- 
lings, the Swdfts, the Selwoods, the Munceys, Widow White, 
and the maiden sisters Wray, and all the good people of his 
flock, mostly the trades-people or old residents of the place. 
All urged upon him the importance of standing well with 
a certain family that were living that summer in the old 
Ponacus manor-house on Ponacus Point. This family—the 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


181 


Grahams — were city people, who might stay up for the 
winter, and whose advent had evidently caused no little 
sensation in the little society. If the Sunday were pleasant, 
he would see them. They were very rich, and quite dis- 
posed to patronize the body in which they worshipped. 

What with furnishing his room, unpacking his books, — 
which arrived Saturday, — he found no leisure to call on 
Miss de Forrest, or to look in upon Winthrop. The weather 
was exhaustingly warm, and the hotel hot, noisy and un- 
comfortable. 

Sunday came, and with it the necessity of his first service. 
He found the little edifice well filled ; and no small stir and 
rustle took place, as, with as slow and dignified a step as 
his nerves would permit, he walked up the aisle, and took 
his place in the pulpit. He knelt for a moment in private 
prayer, somewhat to the astonishment of a portion of the 
people; but his thoughts were so little composed, that he had 
recourse to a brief form he had found in one of his Episco- 
palian books of devotion. As he rose, the choir, led by a 
melodeon, opened with a very showy anthem. That gave 
him time to regain his self-possession a little; so that, with 
a tolerably steady voice, he was able to offer the short in- 
troductory prayer. He then read (ambitiously, of course, 
but not without effectiveness) the hymn, and, while the 
choir were singing it, found the chapter from which his text 
was taken. The reading of its grand and simple words 
helped him wonderfully in overcoming the awkward sensa- 
tion of being looked at ; so that, when he once more said 
“ Let us pray,” he was enabled to abstract himself from his 
novel attitude. He had in his first petition used nearly 
word for word the familiar language of his college-chapel 
days ; but now he was thrown upon his own resources. But 
for his Prayer-book studies he wnuld have broken down. 
As it was, he found great relief in sliding into w^ell-remem- 
bered phrases, and w'as heartily glad to find himself at the 
final “Amen.” While the second hymn was being sung, he 
made a mental vow to introduce a liturgy at the first oppor- 
tunity. 

When he opened his sermon, and announced his text, he 
felt comparatively at ease. There was enough of magnet- 
ism in the sympathy of his audience; and he felt, that, by 
culture and experience, he was fully up to their average 
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BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


level. So he gave himself up to the work of delivery. It 
was a creditable effort. Of course, it was above the heads 
of the congregation; but that did no harm. The clear, 
chaste style, which his Cambridge training had given him, 
could not fail to tell. Above all, it was a new speaker, a 
new face, and new thoughts: at least, a new dress for old 
ones. He had incorporated into it a little of his Broad- 
Church theories, about taking from every quarter whatever 
was good and beautiful. Faces lighted up as they listened 
to his earnest, if impracticable, visions. 

It is wonderful how eagerly the Unitarian mind feeds on 
this fancy. Like the Tartar khan, whose heralds proclaim, 
when he has finished his repast of mare’s milk and dates, 
that the rest of the world may go to dinner ; so the almost 
microscopic company of “Liberal Christians” delight to 
permit, patronizingly, the holy Catholic Church through- 
out the world to banquet on their leavings. All sects and 
all ages are their property. Happy little summer flies! 
Dwn vivimns, vivamus I Let them enjoy in their brief sea- 
son; and when we lay to rest, in the pleasant shades of 
Mount Auburn, the last of the race, let us say over him, 
“ He was a ‘ Liberal Christian,’ and nothing ecclesiastical 
was alien to him.” 

Maurice was not long in learning of the effect of his first 
sermon. It was intimated to him in the grave glances of 
his leading men, and the more timid, but enthusiastic, looks 
of half a score of young ladies. A handsome private 
carriage w^as at the door, with a coachman in plain livery 
on the box. Two ladies were already seated, and an elderly 
gentleman stood at the step. He advanced to meet Maurice, 
and held out his hand. “ My name is Graham,” he said : 

“ my friend Dr. , of New York, for whom you preached 

last Sunday, spoke to me of you. We are delighted to 
have you here ; and you have interested us all exceedingly 
to-day. AVe shall be happy to see you at Ponacus. My 
wife and daughter, Mr. Maurice.” The ladies bowed ; but 
the horses were fretting impatiently, and permitted no 
longer conversation. The carriage whirled away; but a 
hand was laid on Maurice’s shoulder, and his manager 
stood before him, his face shining with heat and satisfac- 
tion. 

“You’ve done it for them folks,” he said: “Graham 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


183 


says to me, as he came out, ‘We’re much obliged to you, 
Mr. Swift, for giving us such a treat;’ and I heard iliss 
Graham say to him, ‘You’ll have to build him a new 
church here, if we come up to stay the year round.’ Come 
home and dine with us. We’re plain folks, Mr. Maurice; 
but we can give you as good a dinner as Graham could.” < 

The good dinner and the smaller congregation combined 
against Maurice’s second effort: but the greater freedom he 
felt perhaps corrected that; and, as he walked home from 
the afternoon church, many eyes looked admiringly after 
him. 

He was quite tired, but it was mental and nervous fatigue 
more than physical; and so, after tea, hearing St. Jude’s 
bell ring, he went off to soothe it there. 

This time the old Rector preached, Winthrop reading 
the prayers. Maurice at first criticised coldly. But, by 
and by, the warm earnestness of the gray-haired man won 
upon him, and the homely arguments were not powerless. 

It was not in the way of any direct proof, but the evident 
conviction of the speaker in the Lord’s divinity, which 
impressed and provoked him. From that as a centre 
seemed to radiate all his thought. Maurice had always 
assumed the prime mistake of all Unitarian teaching, that 
the divinity of Christ was a deduction from the supposed 
necessity of an atonement, and a theological system built 
thereon. Here was the reverse. Christ, God, required the 
atonement; not the atonement that Jesus should be God. 
Upon this was built the whole fabric of a visible Church. 
The position annoyed him by its reasonableness. His first 
feeling was one of spleen, as if the enemy had forsaken the 
ground on which he ought to have been allowed to attack, 
and had retreated to an intrenched camp. What right 
had this man to forsake all that he had been sedulously 
learning to overthrow in his Divinity-school studies ? 

He dropped into Winthrop’s room after the service. The 
young clergyman received him less formally than before, 
and was disposed to talk. They found that they had many 
acquaintances in common; and Alfred Winthrop was one 
of those capital fellows who cannot help thawing out to any 
true and gentlemanly advances. Maurice was too full of 
his theological troubles to keep away from them. He took 
advantage of the first pause to dash into the subject. “I 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


heard )’’ou preach the other night,” he said; “and I own 1 
was quite convinced of what you said, granting your point 
of view. But how do you know what children to baptize?” 
AVinthrop started. “I mean, how do you recognize the 
elect?” — “AVe don’t; we baptize all who are properly pre- 
sented for baptism. All children are elect; that is, I mean, 
Christ died for all mankind.” — “But do you mean that all 
are saved? AVhy, then, are you so hard on the Universal- 
ists?” — “No, of course not: those who accept him as a 
Saviour are saved, those who reject him are lost.” — “But 
the children cannot accept him?” — “Yes, they do: that is 
my very point in Confirmation.” — “But suppose they die 
before that?” — “If they die as irresponsible infants, they 
are received into Christ’s kingdom, of course.” “But if 
they are not baptized?” — “That not being their fault, they, 
perhaps, are not to be held guilty; but, since all men can 
come to holy baptism if they will, the adults, at least, must 
take the consequences of refusal. Meanwhile, we have to 
do all we can to see that the children do not suffer from our 
neglect. I was last week in every house in Connemara, — 
that is, you know, the Irish quarter of Norowam over here, 
— looking up Protestant children. AA^e baptized twelve, the 
doctor and I, this afternoon.” — “But how do you get spon- 
soi*s?”— “ AVell, that is hard, but their Sunday-school 
teachers almost always, and any who will take an interest 
in them. AVe are improving in this. I hope to get the 
sponsors to come up with them to Confirmation some day, 
and so fulfil their obligation of taking care that the children 
be brought to the Bishop.” — “But how do you get the 
children to come to Sunday-school? They tell me that my 
Sunday-school is very small, and that I had better not 
trouble myself about it. There are jealousies about class- 
ing poor children with rich ones, I fancy?” — “AA^e have no 
such trouble, or rather, we cut all that very short; and, as 
for getting children to come, the trouble is to keep them 
from coming against their parents’ wishes. Christmas and 
Easter are such grand times for children.” — “Oh!” said 
Maurice, with a half sigh, “your Church system, — it is cer- 
tainly one of the prettiest of theories, so long as one can 
believe it: I wish I could.” — “My dear fellow, it is real 
AA'hat you want is to stop thinking about Christmas and 
Easter as pleasant English customs, and get to the reason 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


185 


why the Englishman loves them, — because they are con- 
cerning the Birth and Resurrection of our Lord. You 
must make that real first.” — “There is the puzzle to me, 
how one’s abstract theology can make any difference with 
the practical every-day w^ork of the Church?” — “It is not 
abstract. You must find Christ real, incarnate, in His 
Church. The Church is Christ’s body, you know.” — “No; 
I don’t know any such thing. Who says so?” — “St. Paul 
said something very like it in one, if not in more, of his 
Epistles.” 

“Come now, are you serious?” said Maurice; but, seeing 
Winthrop was looking rather shocked, turned the conver- 
sation, and took his leave soon after. Winthrop was in- 
clined to be very distant after this, for a season. Being a 
young man, just at the age to which the priesthood was per- 
missible by the canons of his Church, he could not see much 
else in Maurice but sinful and shocking heresy, which was 
to be combated in a downright manner. Plowever, they 
were at the same table, and were drawn by the same general 
sympathies, and could not help meeting and talking, and so, 
by slow, cross-grained ways, getting to know each other bet- 
ter. 

We have said, or intimated, that the Congregationalists 
of Norowam had just got a new man. The history of that 
sbciety was one and the same with the other two hundred 
and fifty of Connecticut. It had once been the dominant 
one of the place. It was the sick lion of the fable now. 
A large and wealthy section had become Presbyterian, not 
because it doubted the validity of Independent Orders, but 
because it had quarrelled with the leading men of the 
“ First Church,” and preferred to separate. The Baptists 
had nibbled at their edges, the Methodists had plundered 
them at the close of a grand revival, and, worst of all, there 
was a steady drift of the young people into St. Jude’s. So 
the society, feeling a little pinched, and seeing some vacant 
pews, had fallen back upon their biennial resource, which 
was to quarrel with their pastor, and get a new one. This, 
after three months of trying, they had just succeeded in. 
The Rev. Augustine Ralston had preached as a candidate, 
one Sunday, and taken them all by storm. He was not, 
however, the great Augustine Ralston, D.D., but the nephew 
of that distinguished luminary of New Englandism. He 


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received a very hearty call, and accepted it with due 
cavalier nonchalance, which showed what card he intended 
to play. 

With the Puritan ministry of New England, there is just 
one single alternative. Either they must rule the congre- 
gation, or let the congregation rule them. It is a des- 
potism which sometimes stands on its head, and sometimes 
on its heels, but ever a despotism. The recalcitrant 
deacons, the dissentient church-members, must be crushed, 
or the minister must be under the thumb of every 
old Manse Headrigg in the parish ; and his wife will 
not dare to say her soul, much less her bonnet, is her owm. 
Therefore Augustine did nicely in taking the initiative. 
The first attack is half the battle. Moreover, he felt the 
more confident, since, in the event of coming defeat, there 
was open to him those .safe fortresses of “ agencies,” secre- 
taryships, and the like, which run in the families of 
leading sectarian divines, one knows not precisely how, but 
after the manner of that nepotism which is supposed to 
flourish beneath the shadow of the Vatican. He was a 
keen, wary, yet genial man, very fond of art, with that un- 
cultivated, indiscriminate fondness for it which repression 
is apt to produce, like the Quaker girls longing after bright 
hues, and the Quaker youth’s fervor for theatricals. He 
was a great, though slightly indiscriminate, amateur in 
music; had notions about architecture; and was well, but 
diffusely read. He was extraordinarily independent in his 
views, — indeed, his ideas were subversive of all the old 
Puritan platforms, and he loved to air them in controversy. 
He was not a little in the mood of the Irishman who was 
“blue-moulded for want of a bating,” when he came to 
Norowam. He was not quarrelsome, — far from it. Gen- 
tlemanly, kindly, and thoroughly even-tempered, but 
having grown up in a school which regards all opinions 
rather as the foils with which you show your skill in fence 
than as the sword with which one fights for life and death, 
he was always on the qui vive for battle. 

However, he came to the same hotel with Maurice and 
Winthrop, and was naturally set down at the table in their 
neighborhood. Winthrop was not inclined for long chats, 
being busy as a bee ; but Ralston, who was ready to attack 
the episcopacy of the one and the heresy of the other, and 


BRYAN MAURICE OR TUE SEEKER. 


187 


contrived, in a dexterous way, to assume to himself a sort 
of arbitration — became a conversational solvent in drawing 
Maurice and Winthrop into better acquaintance. 

One of these talks had so far a bearing on the story that 
it needs to be given. Ralston’s first attempt was upon 
Winthrop. Indeed, he rather ignored Maurice at first, till 
the latter set him right upon a point of history, wdnch Ral- 
ston, to do him all justice, received with entire good nature. 
Provoking as he could be, when you came to know him, it 
was impossible to quarrel with him. He ivas provoking, 
however. He took advantage of a silence at the dinner- 
table to address Winthrop so pointedly as to draw the 
attention of all upon him. “ Brother Winthrop, when 
shall we have the pleasure of an exchange?” — “ Thank you, 
Mr. Ralston, I shall be engaged till after Christmas, and 
then I shall probably leave.” Ralston bit his lip, but re- 
sumed, “I take it, this is an admission that you would 
exchange with me if you were at liberty?” — “I can’t say 
that it is,” was the reply. “I don’t know you well enough 
to ask you into my pulpit.” — “Oh, I can give you first-rate 
credentials.” — “One will do; when you will bring me the 
Bishop’s testimonial, that will be all I shall ask.” — “That 
is easily enough done; there is Bishop Ralston, my father, 
and the Bishop of Hartford, and the Bishop of Maromus, 
and the Bishop of Norfield, twenty Bishops.” — “ H’m,” said 
Winthrop, with a slight twinkle in his eye, “ ‘1 want better 
assurance than Bardolph’s; I like not the security.’ Be- 
sides, there is another reason I ought to have given. I have 
no pulpit to invite you into at present; I am only Dr. 
Donne’s assistant.” “ Come, now, that is mere fencing with 
the question. Would you exchange with me if you had the 
power?” “No, I would not,” said Winthrop, tired of this 
badgering, “ or with any other who tried to tease me into 
it.” “Oh ! that is not the reason. I am not pressing ycu 
to do the thing, only to say why you are unwilling. Now, 
be frank ; say it is because you do not hold my orders to be 
valid.” “Very well, Mr. Ralston, you knew that perfectly 
well; you knew, before you asked me, that no Episcopal 
clergyman in this Diocese would exchange with you, or con- 
sider you to be a lawful minister; and you ought to know, 
too, that, because it might be disagreeable to you, any of us 
would shrink from stating unnecessarily what we all believe. 


1§8 BEYAN MAUEICE OE THE SEEKEE. 

If you wish me to say it, however, I have not the smallest 
hesitation. I do not consider you, in any sense, a validly 
ordained minister, and, unless you are in a different position 
from most Congregationalists, you are a teacher of heresy.” 
“ Well !” broke in another of the boarders, “ that is polite; 
I must say that is Christian talk for a gospel minister.” — 
“Yes,” said Maurice, who had been quietly listening, “ it is 
polite. Mr. Ralston has been for ten minutes trying to make 
Mr. Winthrop say this. It is evident that his feelings would 
have been hurt if he had not succeeded in making Mr. Win- 
throp say it. As to it being Christian, if Mr. Winthrop 
believes it, it is perfectly Christian for him to say so. You, 
sir,” turning to the interposing party, a manifest layman, 
“ were very indignant last Monday, because that Spiritual- 
ist woman called herself a minister of the Gospel. Was it 
unchristian in you to say she was not?” “Oh, that was 
different ; the Bible says women should not speak in the 
churches.” “ The Bible m.ay have something to say on Mr. 
Winthrop’s side also.” 

Ralston nodded good-humoredly across the table. He 
was too quick not to see when he was fairly met, and too 
candid not to enjoy it. 

“ But why,” said Maurice, turning to him, “ don’t you ask 
me? I am a Congregational ist, like yourself.” “Not in 
fellowship with the Windfield Con-sociation.” “Is that 
necessary? You exchange with Dr. Knox, the Methodist; 
and you have asked Mr. Winthrop, who, I am sure, is not 
in fellowship with the Windfield Con-sociation.” “ Oh, we 
extend the courtesy of our pulpits to the Orthodox denomi- 
nations, to any Evangelical Christians.” “Well?” said 
Maurice. “But you are a Unitarian.” “I don’t admit 
that. I stand upon the declaration of faith of my congre- 
gation. I have it here,” said Maurice, pulling out a little 
square pamphlet. “You admit the right of each body of 
Christians to frame its own professions?” “Yes — that is, 
with some limitations.” “ And you cannot refuse us the 
privilege of stating the doctrine of the Trinity in our own 
terms. If you do, Mr. Winthrop may have a word to say 
about varying from the Nicene Creed.” I make a distinc- 
tion,” said Ralston, rousing a little ; “ that cannot be called 
a statement of doctrine which in terms denies it.” “ Does 
our confession of faith ? Do you know it ?” “Ah! — well, 


BPvYAN MAUEICE OE THE SEEKEE. 


189 


I conclude, of course, it does, or you are not holding to it.” 
“ Wait and see !” Maurice read the introductory part of 
his Church’s Creed. It had been drawn up to keep in a 
portion of the Universalists who were Orthodox — that is, 
held the Trinity, but not eternity of retribution. It carefully 
neither affirmed nor denied, but could fairly be taken either 
way. It was, in fact, a guarded statement cleverly put 
together out of Scripture texts. “Well — ah! — yes, I am 
glad you are so orthodox ; but, you see, there is more to 
come ; universal salvation does, in fact, destroy all the other 
statements.” Maurice tossed his little pamphlet across the 
table to him. That remarkable document had also been 
carefully devised so as to meet the views of some old-fash- 
ioned Unitarians, who liked to have a fair outlook toward 
the penalty side of the universe. Ralston turned and 
twisted ; but the words were all Scripture — nothing, in fact, 
but a mosaic of texts. “Very well put, indeed, Mr. Mau- 
rice, yours ; but, I think, under the known impression 
which the word ‘ Universalist ’ carries with it, a certain 
rule of interpretation must modify these words.” “ Par- 
don me,” said Maurice, “ I deny that. You refuse me a 
right of general comity. It is for you to show affirmatively 
that you are justified, not for me to prove my good standing. 
Besides, Universalist may mean nothing more than a syno- 
nyme for Catholic. Brother Winthrop has a prayer in his 
liturgy about the ‘Holy Church Universal.’ And, again, 
Universalist is the name you gave us, not we to ourselves. 
‘The First Christian Society in Norowam ’ is, as you may 
see, our proper name.” Winthrop laughed outright. Ral- 
ston looked annoyed. He was better used to playing at that 
game than of suffering by it, and he could read upon one 
or two faces that he was getting the worst of it in their 
opinion. “ If yours is a Congregational platform, as you 
contend,” he said, finally — “ and, by reason of its ambigui- 
ties, I cannot well deny it without further study — then you 
are guilty of schism in establishing it in a town where there 
is already a Congregational Church.” (“Schism from 
what f” said Winthrop, softly to himself.) “ And more than 
that, I must say that it is both disingenuous and discourteous 
in your people — not in you, Mr. Maurice, this was before 
you came, when we were the First Church of Christ in 
Norowam — to take a name so near our own.” With this 


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BEYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


parting shot, he jumped up from the table and disap- 
peared. 

“ Winthrop,” said Maurice, with profound gravity, “after 
this you will excuse me from asking you to exchange. I 
cannot concede to you valid orders, as I have none myself; 
nor a sound faith, since you use the Apostles’ Creed, which 
is susceptible both of a Unitarian and Universal ist applica- 
tion.” “Some day,” said Winthrop, looking steadily at 
him, “ I am sure I shall ask you, and break no canon by 
doing it either, or I am much mistaken:” and he held out 
his hand, adding, with a warm pressure, “It will be a 
happy day for me ; for I like you, Maurice.” 


CHAPTER XVi:. 


1\ /rAURICE went into his work with plenty of enthusiasm. 
Itx He could not .or would not see that his people were not 
going along with him. In truth, they yielded at first with 
a sort of puzzled and amused good-nature which he mis- 
took for entire acquiescence. He had no great experience 
of the class to which his congregation mainly belonged, 
and did not even suspect the resolute, hard and unchanging 
Connecticut character which lay beneath their apparent 
ductility. One of his plans was to revive the Sunday 
School. This, though he did not know it, had been a sore 
bone of contention and had caused the downfall of one of 
his predecessors. When Maurice spoke of his intention at 
the house of his manager, one of the young ladies ex- 
changed significant glances with her mother, and her father 
said after a moment’s pause — “Well, I don’t know. Mr. 
Spaulding, he didn’t make much out of it. Our folks 
doesn’t care so much about Sunday Schools as some does.” 
Maurice was utterly unaware of the depth of meaning 
which lay beneath this simple and guarded sentence. He 
did not suspect it was meant for a warning, and went on 
with his plans and his eagerness. After he had gone the 
good wife said — “Now father why didn’t you tell Mr. 
Maurice what trouble Mr. Spaulding had ?” “ He’ll find 

out soon enough — and p’raps, as he’s a different sort of a 
man irom what Spauldin’ was, he may make out better. 
Anyhow, I like a man to try what he wants to try, and 
then if it don’t succeed, he knows where his weak pints is. 
Mr. Maurice has got to make some blunders, and he might 
just as well make them now while he is popular. Any 
rate he shan’t have to say we headed him oflT, and Sary 
Ann and ’Mandy Jane — or one on ’em -will have to take a 
class for him — ’twon’t last long, girls.” So Maurice set to 


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work — enlisted the prettiest and cleverest girls he could 
find for teachers, and then proceeded to gather the children. 
The congregation did not furnish him many. He found 
that most of his flock were single young men in stores, 
mechanics who did not come to church much — several old 
maids and a residuum of families which had as it were col- 
lected from the leakages of other societies. In fact he had, 
though he did not know it, the crooked sticks of the village 
wood-pile — or, to use another metaphor, the monuments of 
all the past old feuds. There was Rhoda Andrews who had 
once been a burning light of the Baptists, but had left them 
in the days of the great slander case which divided Bethesda 
Church and set up Siloam tabernacle by the pond. There 
were the Styles family who deserted St. Jude’s because of 
the cap-pattern quarrel with old Mrs. Rounseville. They 
called it Dr. Donne’s Puseyism, but everybody knew what 
that meant. Then Weston Hicks had “quit the Congrega- 
tionalists at the time Parson Brooks was treated so shame- 
ful.” Pratt also the jeweller had been disciplined by the 
Methodists in a matter involving the fineness and purity of 
the gold he dealt in. And then, oddest of all, side by side 
in their respective pews sate Sam Saunders who retired from 
the Presbyterians, because the Parson would preach about 
slavery, and Justin C. Sorr, who left St. Jude’s because the 
Rector declined to make that his sole topic. Nevertheless 
in all these families the children were not disturbed in their 
old associations, but kept on where they were wont to go — 
or else had been permitted to select for themselves. Not 
more than a dozen could be fairly counted on in the con- 
gregation. 

Then Maurice undertook a regular visiting tour among 
the poorer families of the town in hopes of stragglers. He 
spoke of this innocently enough to. Winthrop one day at 
dinner. Winthrop pve one sharp side glance at him and 
said nothing, but finished his meal rather abruptly. Half 
an hour afterward two of the prettiest and brightest girls in 
Norowam were watching the young Unitarian as he walked 
down Carleton street, and ten minutes after he passed were 
upon his track. Each house that he entered was noted, 
and not a child was lost to St. Jude’s Sunday School. 
Maurice however did add some ten to his list, waifs from 
the rest of the village societies, and was encouraged to 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


193 


hope for several more of the regular Bohemians of Sunday- 
Schools, children who are the despair of superintendents 
and the plague of parsons, always ready to enlist where the 
libraries are new, festivals, pic-nics or clothing supplies in 
prospect, and quite as sure to desert as soon as the induce- 
ment is obtained. They are the “ bounty-jumpers” of the 
Sunday School army. Maurice found that these last ques- 
tioned him rather keenly about the new books, and if there 
would be a Christmas-tree, and volunteered a deal of infor- 
mation about the usages of other Sunday Schools which, 
had he been one whit more experienced, would have put 
him on his guard. He picked up one precious bit of infor- 
mation however which did initiate him somewhat. One 
day, or rather one evening he was walking aw^ay from the 
Post Office toward the Railway Station, when he met a 
couple of little girls somewhere between the ages of eight 
and twelve. He heard one of them say as he passed, 
“ That’s the new minister up to the Universalists.” A few 
steps further on he put his hand into his overcoat pocket 
and found a letter he had forgotten to post. He returned 
on his steps and came up with the two damsels just in the 
shadiest part of Carleton Street. They were talking very 
earnestly and quite loudly, as the wont of such is, and he 
“ could not choose but hear.” “ Then says I to her, 
Ann Maria, I’m not going to your Sunday-School any 
more, and Susy Blake and Lou Porter and they all said 
they wasn’t going, and then she said she w^as going to have 
a prize if she brought more scholars than any other girl in 
her class. And then we said — ‘ What w'as it,’ and she said 
it was a Bible, only she wished it was a fan, and she meant 
to change it at the store for a fan and half a dollar, and 
then we said we’d all go if she’d spend the half-dollar 
for candy and give it to us, and she said she wmuld, 
and then we all went the very next Sunday, and then 
only think when she got the prize she wouldn’t change 
it — she said her mother had took and locked it up and 
would only let her have it Sundays to take to meeting, and 
just as soon as they have their pic-nic I’m going to leave 
and go to some other school. It was real mean of her, 

and just as soon as I get hold of that Bible I’ll 

Here the sound of Maurice’s footsteps startled the speaker 
into silence. 


17 


194 


BKYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


However, the next Sunday there was a pretty good show 
of scholars, and Maurice was busy taking the names and 
then distributing into classes among his young ladies — 
which, though he was not aware of it, he managed so as to 
give plenty of jealous heart-burning to the young maidens 
who were all unused to submit to clerical authority. Then 
he tried to have a general lesson, which did not turn out 
very brilliantly, as he was all unused to that most difficult 
of works — talking to children, and had really nothing in 
particular to say. So, to cover his retreat, he gave out a 
hymn which being familiar to these little ones in other 
schools they joined in with plenty of noise if not of time 
and tune; but wound up with a doxology which was 
heartily sung just at the close of the school when the con- 
gregation were beginning to enter the building. This was 
both to the astonishment and horror of one or two who 
then and there secretly registered a vow against the Sunday 
School. Then the pretty new books in red and blue covers 
were given out, Maurice having to act as librarian himself, 
in his haste and nervousness giving out many more than 
he put down — the young man whom he had selected for 
that duty having taken the day, which was fine, for a drive 
to the next town. The congregation were also kept waiting, 
and Maurice went into his pulpit in a much less assured 
manner than usual. Moreover the rustling of leaves put 
him out several times during his sermon. 

The next day however came the worst consequence. He 
was sitting in his room which he had fitted up very comfor- 
tably as a parlor and study, and Winthrop had just come 
in to call upon him, rather formally it must be confessed — 
when there was a knock at the door. Two ladies entered, 
the very rustle of whose garments betokened suppressed 
indignation. The elder of the two, who wore a manifest 
“front,” introduced herself, saying, “I am Mrs. Abbott and 
this is Mrs. Tyler, our pastor’s wife.” Maurice tried to do 
the honors by presenting Winthrop, when there came a 
sudden outburst of the bottled wrath. “ Oh I’m glad to 
have Mr. Winthrop here — the new ’piscopal minister, I 
s’pose. I’ve known Dr. Donne these twenty years, and he 
never countenanced no such doings. He never allowed no 
such meanness as his teachers to go round gettin’ away 
other people’s Sunday scholars.” Maurice colored up a 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


195 


little, but Winthrop met the attack. “If you mean to 
allude to Susan Prince — she was in the Sunday School of 
St. Jude’s when I first came here. Her mother took her 
away — because she said she would not have her child in 
the same class with the poor children, and Susan was so 
distressed at it that now the Jones family have left Noro- 
warn, Mrs. Prince herself came to me and begged that 
Susan might come back. She is the only scholar in St. 
Jude’s whom I know of, that has been in any other school 
since I had charge of it. Is yours the Methodist or Bap- 
tist, Mrs. Abbott?” The good lady answered very curtly 
with an indignant sniff — “You’ve taken the child away 
from where she was gettin’ religion, to where there ain’t no 
vital piety, only forms, forms, forms, and you’ll have to 
answer for her soul some day.” “ But that has nothing to 
do with the meanness, as you call it. If there has been 
any ‘getting away,’ it was on the part of those who went to 
Mrs. Prince and told her that the Jones children- were not 
fit company for her child.” “Our pastor’s wife” here sud- 
denly let down her veil. “I will not say,” said Winthrop, 
“that untrue stories were told, nor (with a slight rhetorical 
confusion for which we must pardon him) who told them, 
but there has been no interference, at the same time I know 
that the same jacket and trowsers have been offered to five 
different mothers in my congregation if their boys would 
leave St. Jude’s and come to your Sunday School.” Mau- 
rice thought the enemy repulsed and ventured into the 
fight. “What have I done?” he asked. “What no gentle- 
man and no Christian — though I don’t call Universalists 
Christians — would do; going round and coaxing Sunday- 
scholars away, and then giving them Unitarian books to 
read, and to take them home to their families.” “But I 
assure you,” said Bryan, “I have done nothing of the sort. 
I never asked any children to come who said they went 
anywhere else — on the contrary, I forbade two to come.” 
“Didn’t I see myself, them two Collinses coming out of 
your meeting-house this very last Sabbath morning? — I’d 
like to know if the man means to face me out of my eye- 
sight.” Winthrop laughed aloud. “Come, come, Mrs. 
Abbott, you mustn’t make any account of Sam and Sally 
Collins; you know they have gone uninvited to every 
Sunday School in Norowam. Mr. Maurice is rather new 


196 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


here — but you know how they can lie. I don’t think we 
shall any of us complain if lie can do them some good.” 
“ He won’t do them good by teaching them to deny their 
Saviour and giving them Unitarian books round.” 

After much trouble the matter was sifted from all irrele- 
vant issues, and the real grievance came to light. It was 
that the aforesaid Sally Collins, ‘a born limb’ as the matron 
called her, had induced the youngest Abbott to the new 
Sunday School, instead of going where she belonged, and 
that Maurice had in utter unconsciousness given to her, the 
daughter of an ex-Methodist minister, a book on the title- 
page of which was the imprint: “ Published by the American 
Unitarian Association.” This book woefully soiled and torn 
was slapped indignantly down on Maurice’s table. “Well, 
madam,” said he, very blandly but not without inward 
heat, “what must I do to atone for my involuntary tres- 
pass?” “I know what you’d better do — and that is, give 
up trying for a Sabbath School, for according to what my 
Ruth Jane says, you don’t make much out of it. She 
never see such order. Miss Tyler, in all her born days she 
says; but I s’pose you’ll hardly do that. But if you’ll 
write a note to Brother Tyler and say that you are very 
sorry and that it sha’n’t happen again, why, he’s a Christian 
spirited man, and he’ll forgive you.” Maurice was gifted 
with a coolness which in moments of intense provocation 
stood his friend. He was determined to match her impu- 
dence, and with a most winning civility of manner he 
replied: “I think, that would hardly atone for all my faults 
- — but this I trust will do. If you and your husband will 
take a pew in my church, I will try to get a class for you 
to teach, and nobody, not even Mr. Winthrop here, shall 
get your scholars away.” 

She stood as if stupefied a moment and then turned and 
walked straight out of the door, never looking to the right 
or left. The pastor’s wife followed her, turning however as 
she made her exit with a meek, “Good morning, gentle- 
men.” Winthrop threw himself upon Maurice’s sofa in a 
fit of laughter. When he could command his voice he 
said: “Mr. Maurice, I happen to know that you have be- 
haved very fairly and honorably in this matter, and one 
thing I came in for this morning was to thank you for it. 
As for that old tabby, don’t worry yourself. I wish she 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


19 ^ 


had asked me to apologize. But you and I, whatever we 
may differ upon, will I’m sure always be gentlemen to one 
another.” Maurice smoothed the ruffled plumes of his 
temper and soon they were chatting very pleasantly, con- 
cerning common friends in Boston and Europe where Win- 
throp had spent some years as a boy. It was the beginning 
of a warm friendship between the two. 

“It never rains but it pours:” a proverb meteorologically 
false, but morally justifted. Winthrop had hardly gone 
when Ralston appeared. Maurice was in a belligerent 
mood, and braced himself for a renewal of the fight on 
more equal terms. He was not surprised at his visitor’s 
beginning with desultory conversation, for he knew that 
peculiarly feline way in which Puritanism trains its clergy, 
of making a sudden spring upon their victims. However 
he was none the less taken by surprise, when Ralston said 
as if the thought had just come into his head: “Ah! by 
the way, Mr. Maurice, you expressed yourself quite strongly 
— not, eh — stronger than I liked — upon the subject of 
Christian unity. I thought that perhaps you would not 
object to a practical test. I, eh, came to propose to you 
that you should join some of us in a plan for a Young 
Men’s Christian Association. The management will, I 
believe that is customary, be confined to members of the 
first church in Norowam and such evangelical bodies as are 
in fellowship with us: but all other sects are invited to join, 
and will be entitled to all its benefits including the Reading 
Room. If you and the young men of your society who 
bear a good moral character would like to join in it, Ave 
shall be delighted to have you.” 

“ Let me see,” said Maurice, “ we are to have no part in 
the management. Could we introduce into the Reading 
Room Universalist or Unitarian newspapers or magazines?’* 
“ Well, eh, no — that is, the committee on that subject must 
approve — but — I’ll tell you what will be better than to 
bring in a bone of controversy — you might bring in any 
secular papers you liked. There is some talk of having a 
good scientific journal or farmer’s paper — your society 
might donate that. There is for instance the New England 
Naturalist — it is a trifle, a very trifle more costly than 
some other secular papers — but very valuable. It is edited 
by a friend of mine, and I know it to be a good thing. 

17 * 


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BRYAN ]VtAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


We would put it on the list of the Society’s own su])scrip* 
tions, but it was thought best to confine that to religious 
papers apjDroved by the management.” “ Ah” — said 
Maurice — “ I suppose the non-voting members subscribe 
our proportion to the funds of the Society.” “ Oh yes — a 
mere trifle — you have the use of all the things which 
they are used for — Reading Room, fire, lights, etc. ; and by 
the way — we have thought it a good plan in order to en- 
courage membership, to make this regulation. That after 
twenty members of any denomination have subscribed, all 
the rest from that church come in free — that admits the 

poor you know — who might feel a delicacy AVell, what 

do you think of it? I should be delighted to show you 
that we are liberal, and that there are places where all 
professing Christians can meet and join in a common enter- 
prise.” 

It did Maurice’s self-possession great credit that he never 
changed countenance for a second — but replied with per- 
fect blandness — “I think your plan admirable, and I shall 
be delighted to take part in it.” The other had evidently 
expected quite another reception of his proposal — for he 
looked particularly blank for a moment — then gave a 
sharp side glance to see if Maurice was in earnest or in 
irony. The countenance of the Unitarian remained unde- 
cipherable. “ When is your next meeting ?” he continued. 
“ Oh, yes — yes — I forgot that. Thursday night — half-past 
seven. Good-day” — and the Congregation alist bustled ofi^ — 
partly pleased and partly puzzled. “ I think he must be 
coming over,” he said — “ really I don’t see why he shouldn’t, 
he is quite as orthodox as half of our men — only I am 
afraid he will shift into Episcopacy. 1 must keep him out 
of the hands of Winthrop and Dr. Donne — he had better 
stay where he is than go to them.” 

Meanwhile the subject of these plans was standing look- 
ing at the closed door as if following in visionary sight the 
departing guest whose steps died away in the corridor. 
Then he sat down and said to himself — having the bad 
habit of thinking aloud — “Let me see. We are to hold no 
offices and cast no votes. We are not to have our own 
newspapers or magazines. We are to pay for an expensive 
and I dare say stupid paper, because Ralston wants to get 
it taken. We are to bear in addition our full proportion 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


199 


of the burden of the expense. We cannot get more than 
twenty names at the most, while the thirty or forty Congre- 
gationalists will come in at half-price. It is a very admi- 
rable scheme for somebody. I will help it all I can.” 

He took up the printed copy of the Constitution which 
Ralston had left. It was a diplomatically worded docu- 
ment, which had come into being through much tribulation. 
The managers had wished to put in something against 
Bishops, but the Methodist Minister unexpectedly, but 
firmly stood out, so they were reluctantly compelled to 
omit everything which could make the Episcopalians 
ineligible — for office and voting. They consoled themselves 
with thinking that they would always be in a small 
minority, since neither Dr. Donne nor Winthrop approved, 
— but that was not half so nice as to keep them out entirely 
by a dexterous use of words, and then to throw the onus of 
refusing Christian fellowship upon “High Church Bigptry.” 
They had to strike out the word “ baptized,” because the 
Baptist minister signified his intention of challenging every 
one not immersed by a duly immersed Baptist. So the 
Second Article read as follows — “ Every professing Chris- 
tian, a believer in the Holy Trinity, who is in good stand- 
ing with his own religious body, may become a member 
upon signing the Constitution and paying two dollars 
annual subscription — and all such members shall vote and 
be eligible to office. Any others of good moral character 
upon the same terms may become members, except as 
regards voting and holding office.” 

Maurice read this through attentively, then read it aloud, 
checking off each clause as he did so upon his fingers. Then 
a queer, quizzical smile broke out over his face, and he got 
up and went out, and in another minute was knocking at 
the door of another room in the hotel. A young man of 
his own age admitted him. He was clothed in rusty black 
with a very long skirted coat and very narrow strip of 
white linen closely clasping his throat. His blue eye and 
rather irregularly shaped head, which the close cropped 
hair fully displayed, betokened that Celtic origin which a 
slight accent fully confirmed. He looked both astonished 
and pleased at Maurice’s call. When the object of it was 
proposed to him he looked perplexed, but finally seemed to 
comprehend, and at last with all the glee of a school-boy 


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slapped his hand on the table, exclaiming, “I’m with ye! — 
I’m with ye! I’ll just speak to the Father; that’s my 
superior ye know, and we’ll have as many of the boys as 
ye want. Two hundred ye say will do ye. I could get ye 
four — but two will do. Could they make their marks do 
ye think in signing the Constitution? No, I’m afraid that 
wouldn’t go — but a hundred can sign. And now can I 
offer ye anything — it’s early in the day — but if ye’d like it’s 
only ringing the bell — if ye’d like to smoke or a drop of 
something in the punch-line.” — “No, thank you,” said 
Maurice, “ there is a clause in our Constitution about the 
use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco that we must not 
forget.” “Oh, murder! and is it the drink and the pipe 
that ye object to? We’ll, well — it doesn’t signify; it’s only 
putting the boys under a vow for a day — and then we’ll 
have the Constitution put to rights ye know.” 

Maurice was punctual at the meeting on Thursday night. 
There’ were some four or five of his own society there. 
Winthrop declined to join, but laughed when he heard 
Maurice’s plans. The other ministei*s of the place, except 
Dr. Donne, were there. The young Irishman sat quietly 
by Maurice’s side. Wondering looks were cast at both, 
and whispered questions and surmises passed to and fro, 
amid the little group of managers around the president’s 
table. The subject of most of these comments sat still, 
merely measuring the room with his eye, as if inwardly 
picking out places for the introduction of a few highly 
colored prints of a devotional cast in which the room was 
rather lacking. Presently the President stepped into his 
place and rapped for order. About fifteen members present 
beside the non-voters took their places. “Brother Ken- 
drick,” said he, “ will you — it is your turn, I believe — lead 
in prayer?” “No, it is Brother Tyler’s turn,” was the an- 
swer. “ I have a bad cold,” said Brother Tyler, who was 
affronted at not having been asked at the first meeting. 
“Perhaps Brother Ralston had better.” After a little 
amicable wrangle over the matter, the President nothing 
loth, yielded to some one’s suggestion that he should open 
the meeting, and being a Meth^ist class-leader, was ready 
to stir up the gift that was in him. Some stood, some knelt. 
The Irishman turned his back, crossed himself, and pulled 
out his little Book of Hours. Maurice remained sitting 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. :i01 

'vith his head upon his hands. He was edified by hearing 
his own conversion prayed for in everything but by name, 
and Winthrop who was not there by his name in terms so 
coarsely offensive that the only Episcopalian in the room 
got up in the middle of it and walked deliberately out. 

When the prayer was over the secretary was called upon 
to read the minutes. Tlien the President called for the 
names of new members. Ralston looked anxiously at his 
watch. Maurice rose and announced his own name and 
those of the five others whom he had brought, who desired 
to be admitted as non-voting members. These were voted 
in with a quite audible expression of satisfaction. Then 
the young Irishman arose. “I would like to ask a ques- 
tion. Do ye receive as members all who sign the Constitu- 
tion and pay the fees?” “Certainly, if they are within its 
provisions — believers in the Trinity, and in good standing 
with their own denomination.” “They must be of an Evan- 
gelical denomination,” said Ralston. “No,” said Brother 
Tyler who always opposed Ralston on principle, “no, that 
word was stricken out at the first meeting,” and the objector 
put his finger on the printed page. There was a rustling 
of leaves, but the fact was apparent. There had been a 
hope of getting Winthrop to join with the Episcopalians, 
and Ralston himself having been defeated in his attempt to 
introduce the anti-prelatical clause had suddenly changed 
front and insisted upon the most comprehensive terms. So 
the word had been stricken out. One or two began to feel 
what was impending. “I wish then,” said the Celt, “to an- 
nounce as members of this society, voting members, meself, 
the Rev. John Moriaty, deacon of the Church of St. Fran- 
cis Xavier, and the following others, Patrick McGuinness, 
Bernard Sweeny, Patrick Blake, Murphy O’Brien,” and so 
he went on reading out in a stentorian voice the terrible 
roll which seemed interminable, of more than an hundred 
names. As he concluded he laid the list upon the secre- 
tary’s table, saying, “An’ every one of them I can answer 
for that he’s in good standing in his own churruch — indade 
unless it is little O’Reilly, that was suspended for ating 
meat the last Friday that ever was.” There was a dead 
silence which was broken by the timid voice of a member, 
one of those unlucky men who are always suggesting with 
the best intent the very thing which ought to be kept in 


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the shade. “I believe, Mr. President, that we have a clause 
in the by-laws which allows absent members to vote by 
proxy when unavoidably absent. I hope Brother Moriaty 
will not insist upon this privilege which would give him a 
majority of the votes.” Maurice had not seen the by-laws. 
He bit his lip to keep from laughing. Some of the others 
turned white with vexation and dismay. Ralston reddened 
up to his forehead; for he had engineered that very clause 
for the sake of keeping the control in his own society. He 
sprang to his feet to object. “Not, Mr. President, till 
they have paid their subscription — not till they have all 
paid.” “Is that it,” said Moriaty, pulling out a huge 
roll of bills, “then I have it here, two hundred and 
twenty.” Maurice had not told him of the arrangement 
by which the additional members over twenty were to come 
in free. “It is not already paid,” said Ralston, “it is 
the payment, not the production of the money, that makes 
the essence of membership. These bills may not be good, 
or never reach us, for all that we know.” There was an 
ominous light came for a moment in the Irishman’s eye, 
but presently the same mischievous twinkle returned. “And 
whom would I pay it to? Didn’t I hear Mr. Secretary 
read that ye couldn’t agree at the last meeting upon any 
one for treasurer? Now maybe as I’ll be chosen meself to 
that responsible office the night, why would I be after tak- 
ing the money out of my pocket with the one hand and 
putting it back with the t’other? Maybe, as the honorable 
and riverent member insinuates, I’d not be finding all the 
same good bills again.” This last was said with an impu- 
dent wink at Ralston. “But I won’t press the point; 
there’s a heap of the boys at the street corner, and I’ll just 
step out and bring them up to do their own voting, and 
then my modesty needn’t suffer from voting my own name 
an hundred and ten times. I conclude no one will be so 
ungentlemanly as to propose to vote for treasurer while I’m 
out. I’ll not be many minutes.” And he went out of the 
door. For the moment the Society sat stupefied. If he 
returned it would be to vote the whole thing into a Sodality 
of St. Francis Xavier. Ralston’s ready wit rose to the 
emergency. “I move you, Mr. President, the expulsion of 
the following members,” said he, “for notorious evil, life and 
conversation, the Rev. John Moriaty, &c., &c., the names 


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203 


contained in the list on my table.” The motion was hur- 
riedly seconded, when the same timid marplot spoke once 
more. “I believe, I think, yes I’m sure that by our by-laws 
each member’s case must be acted on separately and after 
a week’s notice in writing, with opportunity to appear and 
answer charges.” And then awful silence fell upon them, 
and looks were cast at the unlucky speaker as if they would 
have gladly offered him up as “a burnt sacrifice to Chris- 
tian unity.” “I move to suspend the by-laws.” “Second 
the motion,” cried Ralston and another. The objector tried 
to speak, having found that no motion to suspend was in 
order unless unanimous, and though he most earnestly 
wished for the success of Ralston’s plan and had begun to 
enter into it, he thought some member might like to oppose, 
and in his conscientiousness felt it was right to give the 
chance. His voice was drowned in a yell of “question ! 
question !” And the chairman declaring it the unanimous 
wish of the society proceeded in hottest haste to put the 
next motion. Steps were heard upon the stairs without — 
heavy steps, which might be Hibernian and possibly bac- 
chanalian. There was no time to spare, a shout of “aye” 
recorded the expulsion of the one hundred, and then Ral- 
ston, wholly himself, and not at all dismayed at the prospect 
of a row even, moved an adjournment. “Without prayer?” 
asked the “infant terrible” of the evening, “and the sing- 
ing of a hymn?” “Yes — yes — you — you” — Ralston did 
not say what, but choked dowm a tolerably strong and un- 
complimentary title. “Come over to my lecture-room for 
an informal meeting, and sing as many hymns . as you 
please.” And so amid pulling on of great coats and turn- 
ing out of gas the adjournment was put and carried, just as 
the steps were heard at the door. Three men entered, 
quiet, honest, sober farmers of the Congregational Society, 
voters whom Ralston had enjoined to be sure and be on 
hand to carry the election of treasurer. “ What you ain’t 
a going yet — be ye?” said the foremost, “what’s the matter 
— town ain’t afire is it — nor nothin’?” “Were there many 
of them? — many Irishmen? — when are they coming up?” 
cried several breathless and agitated voices. “Irishmen! 
no, nor Dutchmen, nor anybody else — what ye’re talkin’ 
about?” Everybody w^as in too much of a hurry to listen, 
and the meeting poured into the outer air, surprised enough 


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to find the streets silent and deserted. The terrible Irish* 
men might be in a lurking-place round about, however, and 
the impetus did not stop till Kalston had them safely housed 
in his own lecture-room, save one or two, who, because of 
old feuds, would not, and others who fled till they reached 
their own doors. 

Maurice did not follow, nor was he ever afterwards asked 
to attend or to pay his subscription. The subsequent pro- 
ceedings of the Young Men’s Christian Union were not 
again disturbed by the Kev. John Moriaty ; and the amended 
constitution contained by unanimous consent this special 
clause, “ not being Roman Catholics,” added to the condi- 
tions of membership. When Ralston next met Maurice in 
private, he had the good sense to laugh over the whole 
matter. “ That was your doing, I suspect,” he said. “You 
beat me fairly — but say nothing about it, and I will not; 
and if you like, I will have matters so arranged as to give 
you full membership.” “ No, I thank you,” said Maurice ; 
“ but I will not speak of the matter again, and Moriaty is 
going back to New York next week. How does the Chris- 
tian Union get on ?” “ Oh, pretty well — but the Baptists 

have left and set up the Young Men’s Christian League, and 
there are but three Presbyterians who never attend, so 
that the Methodists and we of the First Church have it all 
our own way. There may be some collision ; you know 
they are fond of setting up their distinctive usages, and 
really I wish you would get Winthrop and a few good fel- 
lows and come in. I’d like to have a little chanting prac- 
ticed. I don’t mean, you know, those stupid old Cathedral 
humbugs, but some of a new arrangement I want to see 
introduced into public worship. The fact is, I never intended 
this for just a perpetual Methodist prayer-meeting. Come 
now, and we’ll vote those fellows into their places and keep 
them there, and then divide the offices.” 

“ Et dona ferentes,” said Maurice, meaningly. “ I think 
on the whole I have conscientious scruples about joining with 
a semi-prelatical body like the Methodists.” Ralston took it 
good-humoredly, and when the Union died out, as it did m 
six months, could not help telling the story himself. 

He was an honest and Christian man in his way, but he 
had been educated into a morality in religious politics not 
unworthy of Liguori. It is the result of that utter absorp- 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


205 


tion of religion into a pure technicality and formalism, 
which is the proper sequence of an attempt at a bodiless 
spirituality. This is the cardinal mischief of New-England 
puritanism. 

After this adventure, however, Kalston took to Maurice 
exceedingly, and was often in his room. Perhaps it is anti- 
cipating matters a little to give one conversation, but it had 
some bearing on Maurice’s future. 

“Where are you going?” he said to Maurice, rather 
abruptly, one hot afternoon as he was lying on Bryan’s sofa. 
“Going? nowhere at present — when do you mean?” “When 
you leave the Universalists — you are going somewhere: In 
the first place you are not satisfied, any one can see that, 
and then you ought not to be.” 

“ Never mind about the being dissatisfied,” said Maurice, 
without looking up, for he had an uneasy feeling to the 
same effect — “ tell me where I ought to go.” “ Anywhere 
would be a change for the better.” “ That does not answ'er 
my question ; when I start, I propose to go to the very best 
of all ; if one must journey, it is wisest to have it pay.” 
“ Oh, the very best of all is the Independent Congregational 
system of New-England, if that is all you want, of course.” 
“ Well, Ralston, you of course can tell me what that is, and 
you said the other day that you did not know where there 
was one of your brethren who agreed with you. Now we 
can’t be both pastors of the First Church in Norowam, and 
if I were to be your colleague, the salary would hardly keep 
us both, I think.” “Come, now,” said Ralston, “haven’t 
you been thinking of St. Jude’s, or something like it, eh?” 
“ Suppose I have, what would you say?” “ I don’t know, if 
you have been bitten by the Puseyites (and they are worse 
than the mosquitoes on Norowam marshes) it is of no use 
to say anything, and I have seen a faint hankering after 
our Mediaeval friend Winthrop, so I am fencing to find out. 
I don’t like to waste powder.” “ Consider me unbitten, and 
out with it.” “ Very well, then, I will, and risk it,” and 
Ralston rose up a little, and, leaning upon his elbow, began 
with his eyes intently fixed upon the face of the other — “ I 
will tell you, you are ambitious. You have ability and you 
know it. ‘Great let me call him for he conquered me,’” 
he added, with a laugh. “Now there is no chance for you 
ixi the Episcopal Church — no such chance as you want. 

18 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


They used to say of the old Democratic party in Massachu- 
setts, that they kept it conveniently small so as to divide 
the federal offices. The men who rule the Episcopal Church 
are very much of the same way of thinking. If it gets too 
large and too active, they will go to the wall, and they know 
it. They are the men who rule that Church, not the Bishops, 
but the men who make Bishops ; they are not all the 
clergy by any means, but you see they manage matters by 
dint of keeping well together and snubbing all attempts to 
be independent. The few who are most able and successful 
laugh at them ; the great hard-working body of their 
clergy are too busy to note them, and the drones and the 
inefficient toady to them. We who are on the outside see 
that. I tell you I haven’t been into the Bible Society and 
such places for nothing.” “ But isn’t it an ecclesiastical 
vice? isn’t it so in all religious bodies?” “Of course it is, 
but it doesn’t work smoothly elsewhere as in the Episcopal 
Church. You see the leaders have the whip-hand. There 
are some of them who know how to get a young man out 
of a parish, and how to keep him out of another, and never 
does he know why.” “ But I thought the Bishops were to 
correct just that.” “ Pooh, pooh, I don’t believe as yet in 
the Apostolic succession, and that there is inherent wisdom 
in the hollow of a mitre. The Bishops have too much to 
do, to see what is going on under their noses. I’ll tell you 
frankly, but you mustn’t repeat it, for I would not say it to 
Winthrop for a good deal, that thing, and perhaps some 
other reasons, have just kept me out of the Episcopal 
Church. Even their best men chafe at the tyranny of 
these dead and fossilized conservatives’ who always are 
remembering the good old times of some departed Bishop, 
and who, I dare say, when Seabury first came over, sighed 
for the conservative times when men had to go to London 
to get their orders.” 

Maurice in his turn, rose up upon his elbow and looked 
from the other couch full in the face of Ealston. “Never 
mind me, only I say to you ‘ wait.’ This very thing keeps 
a good many of our men out. You don’t suppose that we, 
that is the majority of us, believe in the old fiction of Inde- 
pendency? no more do we in the Tractarianism about 
Apostolic Succession ; but we are waiting to see which 
system is going to work the best. Twenty years hence. 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


207 


there will oe a rush of our men to the old Mother Church.’’ 
“But why?” said Maurice. “Well,” said Ralston, blush- 
ing a little, “you’ll find out soon enough — it is, I don’t 
mind telling you, the laity. We cannot control them. The 
Churchmen can — ” “ Is not that because of this past 

influence? They are behind the times.” “ So I say out of 
doors, but to tell you the truth, they are not. They are in 
advance of our laity. And if it were not for our Churches 
they would be far more under their pastor’s control. We 
die hard,” continued he with a touch of the old spirit of 
his ancestry rising up in him, “and every inch of ground 
they get here, they must fight for.” 

“You are a queer mixture,” said Maurice, wonderingly. 
“ Well, I am that,” replied the other complacently, “ but it 
is a proof of my excellent disposition that I am giving you 
such sound advice. I can’t say to you ‘ come to us’ and I 
wont say go to them, and to tell the truth I hardly know 
what to say. You were not born either Presbyterian or 
Dutchman, and those highly respectable sects are not open 
to you.” 

“What do you think of my Broad Church Unitarian 
views? isn’t that to be the thing after all?” Ralston burst 
into a hearty laugh. “ Excuse me, Maurice, but that is too 
rich. I don’t think the Great Eastern will carry the 
Atlantic Cable, but I should hardly propose as a substitute 
a Brooklyn ferry-boat. Your ‘Broad Church’ would be 
swamped in an instant, whenever it attempted a real piece 
of work. It is good to take passengers from the puritan 
city of Beecher to the Episcopal Metropolis where Trinity 
predominates over Wall street, perhaps to bring them back 
again ; but excuse me from an Atlantic voyage in it. No, 
wait and see what will turn up, and meanwhile, as the 
gong has begun to sound, let us get on our coats and go to 
tea.” 

There had been more or less of epidemic disease hanging 
about Norowam. A drought in summer had been followed 
by warm, sultry days and then by a sudden chill with sea 
fogs and the raw easterly airs. Maurice noticed that Win- 
throp’s handsome face looked very grave as he came to his 
meals, that he ate them hurriedly and was soon off. 

Maurice hesitated to ask the cause, but another of the 
hotel boarders called out across the table at dinner, “Many 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 

sick in the parish, Mr. Winthrop?” “Several very sick,” 
was the answer. “ Keeps you pretty busy, eh ?” The 
young clergyman only nodded assent. “ What is the 
matter?” asked Maurice in a lower tone. “Oh this horri- 
ble dysentery. It is the most treacherous thing we have, 
worse than typhoid, I think — except scarlet fever among 
the children, there is nothing I dread so much.” “Well, 
but do you have to go where it is ?” said Maurice. The 
other looked at him with open eyes. “ Go ! why to be sure. 
I was not speaking of myself when I said I dreaded it, in 
fact I haven’t thought of that — it is in the parish that I 
dread it.” “ Why,” said the other who had put the first 
question, “ won’t dysentery kill you parsons as quick as it 
will the rest of us?” 

The young man smiled slightly and then said, “The kill- 
ing is not in the account. We have something else to think 
of I have not found ever in my short experience that men 
live longest who are most afraid of dying. When I first 
began to go about among the sick, one of the Doctors told 
me not to suppose that anything could kill me — and then 
half the danger was over. So I have just acted on that 
j)rinciple ever since — that is not to worry about myself at 
all, which comes to the same end.” 

Maurice looked at him with admiration — there was a 
young man, his junior in years, certainly in attainments, 
for Winthrop had not concealed the respect he felt for 
Bryan’s culture, and probably by no means his equal in 
ability, going about his work in a cheery, whole-hearted 
way which he felt was far beyond his own mark. He 
was destined to see something more of that before the day 
ended. 

In the hall of the hotel a woman metThem, apparently 
in great agitation. She had been waiting there quietly 
enough — but when she saw them, she threw herself, as 
women can, especially among the poor, into an immediate 
excitement. “Oh Mr. Winthrop — Mr. Winthrop — Jake 
is took very sick indeed and we don’t expect him to live 
the night out — you never see anybody so strangely handled.” 
“ What is the matter, dysentery?” “ No, the Doctors don’t 
know what to make of it. Can’t you come right away ?” 
“ Where do you live?” 

“Oh the old place where you baptized the baby, the 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


209 


fourth house, just this side of tlie big elm on the Ponacua 
point road.” “ I can’t come just yet. I must see Mrs. 
Peters and a sick child at the Merills, but I’ll be down 
about five, perhaps.” 

“Can’t ye come no earlier? Well you’ll give me half a 
dollar to buy some medicine, won’t ye?” “I will leave an 
order at the druggist’s — Thompson’s to let you have what 
you need, upon any other doctor’s prescription. You know 
I can’t give you money, Mrs. Blake.” 

He passed out, followed by the woman who gave a wish- 
ful look toward the bar-room, and then relapsed into stolid 
quiet. Winthrop crossed over with Maurice to the Post 
Office. “ Did you hear me settle that Mrs. Blake ?” he 
said, “ I will just tell you — not to let her get any money 
out of you. I know her like a book — her scamp of a sou 
has eaten too many clams and got the colic, I suppose, 
however I must go though I hate taking the long tramp for 
nothing.” 

Just then they met Mr. Graham who entered the office and 
hurried up to the clerk’s window. “Nothing in my box? 
is the afternoon mail from the city in ?” “ Yes, sir.” “And 
nothing in it for me?” “Nothing for you, sir.” “ Then I 
must stop up to-night, and wait till the eleven down to- 
morrow morning — confound it. Ah — Mr. Maurice is that 
you? How are you, sir — how are you getting on?’* 
Maurice caught ]\Ir. Graham’s breath as he spoke : it was 
fearfully bad. His eyes were bloodshot and his face and 
manner feverish. He paused for no answer— but went on 
talking, “ I’ve got to stop up to-night at the House on the 
point, there was a letter to meet me here, and I came up 
this morning to look after the place — expecting to go down 
this afternoon — and plague take it — I must wait for it. I 
feel sick, too.” “ How did you leave Mrs. and Miss Gra- 
ham ?” “Oh they are all right, thank you — haven’t re- 
turned yet from Philadelphia. Well — well — I must make 
the best of it. Here Joseph, you’ll have to take me back 
again — and see here, stop at Snowfield’s and get something, 
a chop or a steak, for supper and breakfast to-morrow. 
That’s the young Episcopal curate who came in with you — 
is it eh? The fellow they are building the chapel up in 
the fields for !” he added looking after Winthrop who went 
swinging up the street in a sort of abstracted way he had. 


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Well he don’t look like one to put your nose out of joint 
— rather a Miss-Nancy I guess. I won’t ask you to come 
and stop with me, to-night, I’m likely to be poor company. 
Good-day — good-day.” 

Maurice could not help noticing the change in Graham’s 
manner. Usually very quiet and polished, he was now' 
boisterous and abrupt, and his usual reticent dignity all 
gone. 

However, he thought no more of it, but w’ent out to call 
upon one of the young ladies of his flock. She was not at 
home, and so feeling the chilliness of the afternoon, Maurice 
returned to his room, had a fire kindled in his air-tight, 
and with a volume of Carlyle — the Past and Present, 
he sate down to pass the evening in comfort. A partly 
finished sermon, lay upon the table. He thought about 
nine he should feel in the mood for writing — perhaps might 
finish it by midnight. He could not tell — he w'as not 
driven — he felt a little weariness of his work — a little dis- 
taste of the oft recurring task. He w'as in doubt what to 
say. He had made a most satisfactory opening, but an 
unlucky sentence had crowded him to the border of posi- 
tive teaching. He was so far of a truthful temper of 
thought, that he could not turn aside from a perceived con- 
clusion and take refuge in platitudes. He lacked as yet 
that fatal facility of the pulpit. So he waited for inspira- 
tion and meanwhile found it pleasanter to dream over the 
heroism of the mediaeval monk, than to plunge into un- 
known and perhaps dangerous w'ays. So he lounged back 
in his most comfortable chair after tea with his feet half in, 
half out of slippers, reading in a lazy content as he listened 
to the rush of the wind by the house, and the occasional 
dash of rain upon his carefully curtained window. There 
came a knock at his door. “ Come in !” he called without 
rising, supposing it to be the waiter with letters from the 
Post or firew'ood for the stove. The door opened and Mr. 
Graham’s man, in a rough great-coat on which the water 
glistened, stood there. “ Mr. Maurice, Mr. Graham is very 
sick indeed — I’ve just sent the Doctor, and then he told me 
to call for you. I’ve got the buggy at the door — wants you 
to come right away.” Maurice sprang up in a tremor of 
excitement and alarm. To do him justice he did not think 
of contagion, his was the moral fear of a new situation. 


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211 


and the excitement of being summoned to visit the most 
important parishioner he had upon such an errand. Of 
course he had no “ Clergyman^ s Companion , no Kector’s 
Vade Mecum or Visitatlo Infirmorum, to take with him. 
He must carry in his own head and heart whatever was 
needed. However he constrained himself to appear calm, 
put on his warmest wraps and storm protections, and fol- 
lowed the impatient Joseph down stairs. A man with a 
lantern was standing at the head of Mr. Graham’s little 
black mare. She was fretting restlessly, and could hardly 
be kept still long enough for them to get in. They had no 
time to draw the Buffalo robe about them, for as soon as 
she felt the reins draw she was off with a dash into the 
darkness. 

It was a wild night enough. Most of the shops were 
already closed, and the lights in the dwellings were obscured 
by curtains or shutters. The moon was behind the thick 
clouds, so that the Norowam Gas Company had withholden 
their light from the street-lamps. The spirited little animal 
plunged through the mud of the black road. A lightning 
flash, as they passed St. Jude’s, showed the tall spire and 
tower standing white and ghostlike against the black night, 
and also showed them the w'ay which branched to the right 
toward the railroad crossing. Just before they reached it, 
Joseph pulled up with a suddenness which nearly threw 
the mare upon her haunches. There was an angry glare of 
light ahead, and with a rush and roar the Express train 
swept by them within a few feet of the horse’s head. 
“Lucky I remembered the train when I did,” said the man, 
“we were square into it — but the wind blew so I never 
heard it come. There ought to be a gate here, that’s a 
fact.” Maurice felt a great shuddering thankfulness take 
hold upon him. Happily the mare was headed for home, 
for after this last she would not be controlled, but broke 
into a run. If she had not known the way well, they would 
have come to speedy grief. Presently, however, they rose 
upon a little ascent, and the moon at the same time broke 
through the driving clouds. They were in front of a square 
house of dark stone, relieved only by a light verandah 
painted white. Behind a light or two showed the village. 
Then came the darkness again, as they turned into the 
cross-road which led across the salt marshes to Ponacus 


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Point. There was a strange gleam along the fields, w'hich 
the moon showed them far and wide covered with water. 
It was the flood-tide of the September equinox. In the 
lulls of the storm they heard at intervals the distant hollow 
roar of the surf. Nothing now broke the full force of the 
dashing sheets of rain which almost blinded them, and 
presently they heard the splash of the water under them, 
and the mare’s pace perforce slackened to a walk. Whether 
they were on or off the road they could not tell. “If this 
is the full sweep of the tide, we’re in for it, though I’ve 
lived on the point seven years come next May, and never 
saw the like of this.” It was up to the hub of the fore- 
wheels, but fortunately for them, the stone walls broke its 
force, and the tide had room to spread over the broad 
levels. The gallant little Morgan horse pulled through to 
the rising ground beyond the town, and then shaking her- 
self set ofl* upon a gentle trot. Joseph crossed himself. 
“That is a narrow escape we have had, sir; if we had gone 
off the road we should have lost the buggy, and maybe 
drowned the horse. She is too good a little thing to die in 
a ditch. It’s a good rubbing down, and a good feed, and a 
dry bed she’ll have to-night, if I sit up till morning for it. 
You won’t be going back to-night, any way.” 

It seemed a long tedious ride to Maurice, yet was not 
really very far. Presently the darkness ahead grew denser, 
and he became aware that he had reached the trees of the 
Graham wood, heavy pines and horse-chestnuts and some 
noble elms in the avenue. The light of their lantern 
gleamed upon the posts of the gateway, rough columns, 
built of small stones set in cement, and terminating a high 
plastered stone wall. A light shone from the house as they 
turned into the grounds, and followed the sweep of the 
carriage-drive. There was a high flight of steps, and then 
Maurice found himself in a square hall with a heavy bal- 
ustraded staircase upon the landing-place of which stood a 
heavy clock in a case of ebony with a full moon shining 
upon the upper part of its dial-plate. He was shown into a 
side room, the dining-parlor, where was a blazing Are. He 
was only too glad to compose himself, and to feel the genial 
warmth. He found his outer wrappings quite wet. There 
was a distant sound of groaning which he heard now and 
then. He could not tell whether it came from the trees 


BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


213 


outside, or from the room overhead, but he dreaded it miglit 
be the latter. Like most young men unused to it, he shrank 
from the sight of sickness and pain. He tried to think of 
what he had to do, what he had come there for, but could 
not clear his thoughts from the confusing monotony of the 
ticking clock upon the stairs and the beating gusts at the 
windows. At length there appeared one of the women- 
servants to say, “Mr. Graham will see you now, sir.” At 
the head of the stairs, outside the sick-room, he met the 
Doctor. “Be careful about exciting him,” said the latter. 
“There is great cerebral inflammation already; we have 
been trying opiates, wdthout effect thus far, and unless we 
can produce rest, it will go hard with him.” The face of 
the physician was a shrewd but kindly one; weather-beaten 
as one that had faced the storms of a thirty-years’ practice, 
and his keen eye never looked so steadily, and his gray hair 
cover so resolute a brain as in the crisis of a difficult case. 
His was the coolness of long and not unsuccessful coping with 
emergencies. He saw that Maurice was both flurried and 
reluctant, but, himself a churchman, he was unwilling to 
turn away from a patient the spiritual aid which was asked, 
even though he might doubt its efficacy. He laid his hand 
on Maurice’s shoulder: “Keep cool,” he said, “and if he 
gets over-excited, you will excuse me if I interfere.” Kindly 
meant as it was, it overthrew the little self-possession left to 
the young minister. He entered the sick-room, and luckily 
did the best thing he could have done, which was to 
advance to the sick man’s side and take his hot hand. The 
old man, for Mr. Graham was that, a tall, strong-framed 
and handsome one withal in spite of his years, clung to him 
with a feverish grasp. 

“Oh you’ve come; can you do me any good — can you do 
me any good? The Doctor tells me to be quiet, but I can’t 
be quiet. I am afraid to die. The devil is waiting for my 
soul outside — there, can’t you hear him laugh?” he said, as 
a wild shuddering sough of wind in the pine-tree tops min- 
gled with the rattling of the casement and the hollow eddy- 
ing in the wide chimneys. “Oh, I’ve been an awful sinner. 
Where’s Gertrude? don’t let Gertrude in ; she mustn’t 
hear. Oh, can’t you do anything for me?” Maurice stood 
perfectly powerless. “You must try to be still,” he said at 
length. “If the medicine will only operate you will not 


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die, and you prevent it from operating.” A faint shadow 
passed over the Physician’s face as he stood by the bed-side 
where he could see but not be seen by tlie patient. “This 
is more your case than mine,” he said, in a low tone, to 
Maurice, “you must relieve his mind.” “Oh, tell me some- 
thing to help me. I can’t die — I don’t know anything 

about death. You have been preaching to us — Dr. 

there in town has been telling us, that what a man does in 
his life-time will go on with him. I never did anything in 
my life except to look out for myself and my family. I 
wasn’t brought up to this thing, but to the old Assembly’s 
catechism and all that. I took to Unitarianism because it 
was easy going. It may be nice for you ministers to trust 
to, but when a man like me has nothing of his own, what 
is to help him? Don’t try to tell me there is no hell, I 
know better than that; there is, and it is just for such men 
as me, who have had their easy time in this life.” “But 
you cannot have been such a great sinner,” said poor Mau- 
rice, at his wit’s end. “Much you know about it. Where 
have I made my money? There’s a man on the Guinea 
coast can tell you. No questions asked, twenty per cent, 
paid down. I tell you that just because I only had to draw 
my check on the bank for that money and shut my eyes, 
and let other men manage the business, buy the ship and 
fit her out and get that devil incarnate Hank Bailey for 
master, that don’t clear me. My money helped do it, 
there’s where it is. Oh me! oh me!” and he rolled about 
in a fresh access of pain. “And where did I spend it? It 
is safely invested way down below Lispenard Street, and 
you can see and smell that money. It smells worse than 
when it was rotting under the slaver’s hatches in the calm 
off Antigua. That money is buried under the floor of a 
tenement block, where they have any floor, and it pays 
twenty per cent, of scarlet-fever and typhus, and the earn- 
ings of that too came to me. Do you want to know how 
I’ve been spending them? Well, you won’t know because 
I may get well after all, and then it were best not told — 
you won’t know unless you can help me.” 

And tlien, with the strange self-command of sickness 
which comes between its paroxysms, he said quietly and 
coldly, “I am talking too much. Doctor, I’m afraid— that 
opium you have given me, must have got into my brain, I 


BKYAN xMAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 215 

think. Mr. Maurice, if you like to offer a prayer for me — 
do so.” Then a fierce spasm of pain seized him once more; 
in the midst of it he seemed to gather strength, and looked 
up almost angrily at Maurice. Don't pray for me,” he 
said, “unless you can pray to some purpose. What can 
you promise me?” and then he fell to moaning and asking 
for some one to help him. The Doctor slipped out of the 
room. Presently he returned ; he beckoned to Maurice. 
“Unless that opium takes effect in half an hour,” he whis- 
pered, “he won’t live the night out. You may think I am 
taking a great liberty, but I have sent for Mr. Winthrop 
whom I left just now at the farm-house across the way. I 
know him in a sick-room, and I think he can give Mr. 
Graham some comfort; if that can be done he can rest, and 
we shall probably pull him through, and save body and 
soul both.” Maurice was too much relieved to feel offended, 
and heard with joy the opening of the heavy hall-door and 
the voice of Winthrop in the passage-way. The young 
clergyman presently came in, and went straight to the bed- 
side. Graham measured him from head to foot with a 
single glance, his eye flashing with the wild-fire of fever. 
“What can I do for you, sir?” said Winthrop, as he stood 
before him, but the question was not asked in hesitation, 
but in the assured tone of one ready and willing. “ I shall 
soon see. I have been a great sinner and I want help.” 
“First confess your sins and then repent: ‘The blood of the 
Lord Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.’” “Do you only 
say that, or do you mean it?” cried the old man. “I mean 
it from the bottom of my heart.” “Must I confess every- 
thing? I am weak and my thoughts wander.” “No — an- 
swer me my questions — you can specify if you need.” And 
then, sitting on the bed-side, he began with the Command- 
ments, not in form but in substance, giving to each also the 
spiritual expansion which the New Testament teaching of 
the Lord has added to the letter. After each he paused, 
and then asked: “Are you consciously guilty in respect of 
this or of any part of it?” The sick man could only feebly 
move his head — exhaustion Avas fast coming upon him. If 
the sign was affirmative, the further question was then put: 
“ Do you repent, and do you desire and purpose, God help- 
ing you, amendment?” 

Once or twice Winthrop looked anxiously at the Doctor, 


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BIIYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


but Graham siglied to him to go on, and when it was all 
through he said faintly but eagerly, “Now pray — pray.” 
“In a moment,” replied Winthrop, and then he asked fur- 
thermore in the form of questions, the articles of the Creed. 
Graham assented eagerly. When all was done, he said, 
raising himself a little in bed, “God alone can forgive sins. 
Did Jesus Christ, when on earth, forgive sins?” “Most 
assuredly He did,” answered Winthrop. “Then I believe 
Him to be God — I will try to believe Him to be my 
Saviour.” Tears were falling freely from AVinthrop’s eyes. 
Saying, “Let us pray,” he knelt, and holding the sick man 
by the hand, he uttered those most appropriate and com- 
forting collects which the Visitation Office provides, to- 
gether with the one for Trinity Sunday and that of the 
week. Quiet came over the features of the patient. “Now 
Doctor,” he said, “ I can sleep — good night to you both.” 
The young men left the room. 

A servant met them below in the hall, saying, “Gentle- 
men you must not think of leaving to-night, indeed you could 
not get through ; there is a tremendous tide upon the cause- 
way, and your rooms are ready. Presently the Doctor 
came down with a cheery look upon his face. He gave 
AVinthrop a hearty shake of the hand. “ AVe’ll pull him 
through yet — at all events your coming has done him so 
much good, that the chances are fair for him now. He is 
very weak though.” “ Call me. Doctor,” said AVinthrop, 
“ if you think he is sinking in the night; and now I’ll go to 
bed — I’m terribly tired.” So off he started. “Tired!” 
said the Doctor looking after him, “ I should think so. He 
walked down to the Point here just as the storm was coming 
up, and he has been visiting the sick every hour since he 
got out of. bed this morning. Here — Jane — Margaret, 
what’s your name? Can’t you take him up a glass of wine 
and a biscuit? Stop, I’ll have him down, he must have 
something, and I want something too.” So Maurice, who 
was utterly upset by the excitement and sense of failure, 
and the near presence of death in the house, could hardly 
believe his eyes when he saw these two, just now so full of 
anxiety and active care in the sick room, sitting down to 
chat cosily over their bit of supper, which AVinthrop owned 
he needed very much. ^laurice could not help intimating 
a little of his wonder. The young priest colored a little. 


BIIYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


217 


as if feeling himself censured by one with whom lie desired 
to stand well. The thought crossed his mind that jierhaps 
he had brought scandal upon the Church, though nothing 
could be more temperate than both his eating and drinking, 
as nothing could be fitter for the delicate and slenderly- 
framed young man. But the old physician laid his hand 
upon Maurice’s shoulder. “ My young friend,” he said, 
“ when you see as much of sick rooms as I have, you’ll find 
that the best way to do one’s duty effectually in them, is to 
carry as little out of them as you can. Sympathize as much 
as you like on the spot, provided it doesn’t hinder your 
work, but when you are through, if you want to keep well 
yourself and ready for the next emergency, do just what 
my friend Winthrop here is doing. Let the whole matter 
alone — don’t keep worrying over it. It is all a matter of 
training and right Christian feeling. Winthrop for aught 
I know may be going this next morning to marry Mr. 
Jones’s daughter, or to baptize the Slocum baby. Jones 
and Slocum have just as much right to his joyful sympathy 
as poor Graham up stairs to his sorrowful sympathy ; 
‘ suum cuique — suum cuique’ as we used to say in college,” 
and he held up his glass of port to the light and then took 
a comfortable sip. “ That’s true. Doctor,” said Winthrop, 
“ and, Maurice, I used to feel as you do at first, but I had 
to get over it, and I don’t find I do my work the worse, and 
so according to my theory I am going to bed and to sleep, 
for it is most midnight.” 

Maurice, however, lay long awake, listening to the roar 
of the wind and the heavy beating of the surf upon the 
rocky point. Twice he fell into a doze and woke as the 
massy house shook, dreaming that the Mystic was again 
sinking under him. The third time he went off into a pro- 
founder slumber. 

His thoughts had not shaped themselves into definite 
form — he was busy speculating over the things which Gra- 
ham had let fall in his pain. Meanwhile the Doctor sat in 
the sick-room sometimes dozing, sometimes waking and 
looking toward the sleeper. He too had heard the half- 
uttered confessions, if confessions they were, and though 
little prone to give much weight to the things which sick 
men say, he could not help musing upon the words spoken 
that night. 

19 


218 


BKYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


It was about four in the morning when Graham roused 
up suddenly. The storm had died away, a fitful gust swept 
now and then around the house, but the wild dashes of rain 
had ceased, and through the half-closed shutter a gleam of 
moonlight shone into the room. The sick man was sitting 
up in bed. “ Doctor,” he said, “ come here.” The Doctor 
was at his side in a moment. “ I said some queer things 
last night, very queer no doubt, but all true — but I want 
to tell you about them — you are an old man like myself 
and these young ministers are just boys. One can’t help 
me because he don’t know how to, and the other I don’t 
like to tell such things to. But I’ll tell you. I wasn’t in 
the slaving business myself, but this was it. My neighbor 
Winston, on the street — Ward, Winston and Sikes, two 
doors West of me you know — came to me a year or two ago 
to get me to join in a private investment. He wanted me 
to put in fifteen thousand, and no questions asked. He was 
ready to let me have collateral to the amount of thirty as 
security, and promised me cent, per cent, return. I knew 
better when I did it, for that was no business way for a 
man who could get what money he liked at the easiest 
rates, but I let him have it. After he had got the money 
I went into our office one day and found that he had been 
getting insurance on a ship, bound to the coast of Africa. 
I knew then that it was no palm oil or ivory voyage, 
because he had offered a good deal better than the regular 
rates. Six months after he came to me with his check for 
thirty thousand. The Mercantile Mutual had to pay policy 
on the ship Seabird, run ashore on the east end of Cuba. 
I suppose I might have objected, but there I was with that 
money in my pocket, just bribed to keep still under the 
fraud. I don’t see either. Doctor, how I could have made 
a fuss, because I had no proof. Only my sitting easy at 
the l)oard of directors was just what Winston wanted, and 
had paid me to do. Somehow I couldn’t put that money 
into an honest business, especially whmi I came to hear as 
I did about the Seabird’s voyage. So I lent it to old 
Atkins, the veriest old miserly landlord in the city, and he 
bought with it Typhus Bow, where the people died like 
rotten sheep this summer, and I’ve been making my seven 
per cent, out of their sin and misery ever since. It is no use 
saying that I didn’t do it, and didn’t know of it. Atkins 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


219 


came to me to ask me to use my influence with the Board of 
Health to keep things quiet, and then he ofiered me half per 
cent, on his rents, and he is getting fifty for every dollar he 
has ever paid there, if I would only give a dinner at Del- 
monico’s to the city reporters of one or two of the papers, 
and at the same time let them understand that they 'had 
better make their articles about the markets, and at any 
rate say nothing of Typhus Row. Then he said, ‘ Wouldn’t 
I just give them one or two invitations to ray wife’s large 
parties, and let them have a limited credit with a Broadway 
tailor.’ I saw he was awfully frightened, but two things I 
didn’t see, and these were why he should pay me so liber- 
ally, for pulling his chestnuts out of the fire, and why he 
would not do the work himself. However I told him I 
would take a look at the property, and give him an answer 

the next day. I took a walk up — street — gar-r ! I 

can smell the smell of it now. I just made an errand up 
one stair-case to look into one of the rooms, and that was 
enough. I turned sick and faint, and had to get a glass of 
brandy at the first oyster shop I came to. I didn’t drink 
much of that either. Doctor, for it was the regular-rifle 
stufi*, kill at ten paces, you know, and what little I did 
take, made my head spin like a top, and I understood how 
the men and women who drink such stuff commit the 
murders and crimes they do. Well I got away, and when 
I saw Atkins, he had a piece of my mind sure — and what 
do you think he said ? Unless I kept the newspapers oflT 
he’d sell the property, and I might foreclose for what I 
could get. He said the property in his hands was worth 
something, but in any one else’s wouldn’t be worth two 
cents, for it was just slated over with mortgages, and he 
had given me a third instead of a first, and then after the 
money was loaned had given the wink to the other mortga- 
gees, and they had put theirs on record, and I must keep 
the property up or lose the whole. Then I cooled down — 
no. Doctor, I’m not talking too long, it will ease me more 
than your medicines can — and then I offered him if he’d 
just pay up and let me wash my hands of the concern, he 
might have the six months interest due that day, and bribe 
the reporters with it himself. He demurred, for he was 
afraid he’d have them black mailing him all the time, and 
so li<=‘ wanted me for catspaw. But this cash down was too 


220 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


much for a man like him, so he gave in and said he’d get a 
friend to fix the matter, and so he did with a vengeance. 
For this friend went, and represented that I was the real 
owner, and did not want my name known, and that they 
must let up until I could effect a sale. There’s another 

nice business. One of them, the ’s reporter, came tc 

me a week ago, and said that he was a poor fellow, and 
thought that it was only a matter of business: when gen- 
tlemen didn’t want to be interfered with till they could sell 
their property, and were ready to do the handsome thing, 
it was understood that any little compliments of the kind 
were fair on both sides. ‘ But,’ said he, ‘ Mr. Graham I’ve 
had to go up into your block there after the murder at 131, 
and I saw what it was, and I can’t keep still any longer. 
I’ve pawned pretty much everything I have, and I’ve lived 
on a few crackers a day for a week past to rake and scrape 
the price of that dinner, and here’s the money ; it is just 
the price of blood, and I can’t touch it. I’ll be a free man 
once more.’ The tears came into his eyes as he put down 
the money, and then he drew himself up, half expecting 
me to pitch into him, I suppose. When I said nothing, he 
seemed to get courage, and on he went. ‘ Mr. Graham 
you’re a rich man, and I dare say haven’t an idea what 
such dens are like, but you wouldn’t sleep to-night a sound 
sleep if you were to look into Typhus Row, and I just beg 
you to heed for once what a poor devil of a newspaper man 
says, and take a part of the rent you get to make that 
place a little more decent for human beings to live in. I’m 
no fool. I don’t aisk you to make a model lodging-house 
or a Fifth Avenue Palace, only make those rooms so that a 
fellow like me can go into them, and not turn sick and 
faint at the sight and smell. If I can’t stand it after being 
week in and week out at the Criminal Courts, then you 
may know it is bad.’ I said to him, ‘ Keep your money : 
it was stolen from me to pay for your dinner, and I give it 
to you to show up that thing as it ought to be shown up. 
I don’t own one brick or rafter there and never did. I lent 
some money on it on bond and mortgage, and never saw 
the property till a month ago. He’s used my name for his 
own little business. I sha’n’t tell you his name, for you 
would be giving him that money back, and I mean, who 
have the best right to say so, for you to keep it.’ ‘ I’d give 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


221 


the fifty, and starve another week, and pawn all the rest of 
my traps to have you own it ; for then you would do some- 
thing about the place. Now it will be no good, I fear, say- 
ing anything.’ Then I told him how I was trapped, only I 
told no names, and he held out his hand to me, saying he 
hoped I would excuse what he had said, and then he added 
frankly enough, ‘ Mr. Graham, if you rich men would but 
look after the investing of your money as sharp as you do 
after the making, things would be better all round. We 
are pretty hard boys, we men of the press, but we see 
things very much as they are, and we don’t love wickedness 
the better for seeing it.’ That cut deep. Here was this 
one sum, which I didn’t need, had been doing the devil’s 
work straight through helping to bring a cargo of slaves to 
Cuba, to cheat an honorable Insurance Company, to keep 
up a tenement-house iniquity, and to bribe a poor fellow to 
forget his duty, and to poison that well which ought to be 
keeping us all right and pure. I did not know that it was 
doing all this mischief. But I might have known if I had 
taken pains. I will say that I didn’t suspect the slaving 
business till after it was begun, but still I might have 
known that a private loan on such terms meant mis- 
chief.” 

“ But Mr. Graham allow me to ask you one thing — why 
should Winston apply to you, when he could have used his 
own funds?” “Oh, I can’t tell — he was ashamed of the 
business, wanted to have another man — very likely my 
name was so used that in case of a break up, I should have 
had to bear the brunt. They say the managers of those in- 
fernal affairs who have only their necks to risk, take good 
care to have responsible paying men to buy them out, and 
to hush up matters. Very likely I risked an hundred 
thousand. Now just one word more. Doctor, and I have 
done. I fear that money will just go under the devil’s 
belly, as it came over his back. I came up here to Noro- 
wam to see after a certain anonymous letter sent me, and 
intimating that my son had been bringing sin and shame 
and misery into a poor man’s household, and that I must 
provide for that. If it be so, that money will go as it came, 
and may be I’ll go too.” “ I suspect,” said the Doctor, “ I 
can tell you something about that letter. We country 
physicians know a good deal about many matters. You 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


may rest easy so far as your boy is concerned — he has been 
foolish, but he’s not answerable for anything but foolish- 
ness.” “ Thank Heaven — thank Heaven for that. Doctor, 
you’ve done me more good by that word than all the 
medicine. Now just hear me make one promise, and vow 
I’ll put that money into the Savings Bank, and when I can 
find the man, I don’t care what his denomination, who isn’t 
afraid to preach to us rich men our duty. I’ll build him a 
church with it ; that I vow, and you are witness.” The 
shrewd old physician gave a quiet smile ; he had heard such 
resolves before now, but he was too good a Doctor to show 
his thoughts. We shall see bye and bye if anything comes 
of it. 

Fair and clear rose the morn after the wild storm of the 
night. The Doctor reported Mr. Graham as sleeping 
soundly and likely to recover. Winthrop went over to the 
farm-house to see after his other patient. It was arranged 
that the two were to be sent to the village after breakfast, 
which one of the servants said would be ready in an half- 
hour. So Maurice gave one glance toward the beautiful 
village reposing in its valley, and then turned down the 
long avenue which led to the shore. It was strewn with 
leaves, and here and there a huge bough had been snapped 
off. Lombardy poplars stood stiff and tall like giant 
brooms, the white and ghostly branches of the buttonwoods 
towered above them, while beneath were gnarled apple trees 
with slanting trunks and deep cavernous eyes in them 
which decay had wrought. From the west came flying 
the large, black and solemnly flapping crows, now by ones 
and twos, and then in whole flocks. Over the blue waves 
were flashing to and fro the wheeling flights of the sea-gulls. 
The air was fresh and elastic as after a storm, and quite a 
little swell was rolling in upon the rocky end of the point. 
Far across the Sound was swiftly gliding one of the mighty 
steamers of that inland sea, delayed by the storm. If 
Maurice only had known who looked out from its deck to- 
ward the grassy point! Out of the deep “fiords” opposite, 
which form such capital harbors of refuge in a storm, 
were stretching slowly out under shortened sail coasting 
craft, wliich had anchored there from last night’s gale. 
The blending smoke and steam like a mourning badge of 
black and white was streaming from above the busy 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


223 


mills of “ the Bay,” as a neighboring inlet was called. It 
was a bright and joyful scene, one thoroughly fitted to 
refresh the mind after the feverish atmosphere of a sick- 
room. Yet in spite of all its freshness Maurice was 
thoroughly depressed. His thoughts constantly reverted 
to his own failure. It was not in mortification but in 
a deeper sense than anything personal could give. The 
more he thought upon it, the more he felt satisfied that 
he could not have done differently. He was willing to 
learn if there was aught to be learnt, but it did not 
seem so here. Yet it was clear that Winthrop, much 
his inferior in many things, was nevertheless possessed of a 
power and spirit, which gave him assured position and in- 
fluence. He felt that he could not have said the things 
Winthrop had said ; that he did not wish to say them. But 
what had he better to put in their place? To call them 
Orthodox stuff, cant and the like was very easy, but his 
own words had been utterly powerless, while in spite of 
prejudice against them, Winthrop’s simple sayings went 
straight to the mark. And then out of the clear bright 
morning there grew as it were, he could not tell how, this 
question. Was it not after all a broader field upon which 
the true controversy was ranged? Was not the failure of 
the one and the success of the other a test? Was it not 
something beside an accidental combination of circumstances 
— was it not because one was building on the sand, and the 
other upon the rock? Maurice started at the thought. “It 
is just a notion born of my miserable vanity,” he said to 
himself. “I am unfit for the ministry, and must seek 
something else.” But still the broader question would rise 
up; Was it not his ministry itself which had been weighed 
and found wanting? Was it all a matter of personal gifts? 

Very well, suppose it was; what were those gifts? He 
turned over in his memory as he walked up the rough, w’orn 
lane toward the great house amid its sheltering pines, the 
whole of the last night’s scenes. Winthrop was a little 
abrupt in manner, while foreign travel had given to Maurice 
great courtesy and an almost feminine gentleness. Was it 
the power of sympathy? Maurice was feeling a real and 
personal interest, while Winthrop was called to a mere 
stranger. Here nevertheless was the clue, as he could not 
but feel. It was the difference of personal relation. 


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Two or three days after Winthrop was again sent for to 
the house on the point. He had a long interview with Mr. 
Graham, and came away looking very serious. The old 
gentleman had made a full statement to him of all the fore- 
going matters. The young priest had met it in a simple, 
quiet way. His first question was, “ Have you ever been 
baptized ?” The answer was, as he suspected, “ No.” “Very 
well, then your first step is there. Do you believe in the 
Saviour?” “I believe in you — I believe your Church to 
be right, because it knows how to deal with a sick and sin- 
ful man. Your Church teaches the Trinity, does it?” 
“ Yes, most certainly.” “ And you believe the Bible teaches 
that?” “ I do ; 1 know it.” “ Well I am too old to go into 
that controversy ; but if believing Christ to be God made 
you come and give comfort to my sick bed, as you did, then 
it must be true. If it is true, then of course it is right to 
do as you say. If Christ came to me, and said it was so, I 
should of course believe it, though I did not understand 
how it could be, because I believe in Him. Now when I 
see you showing Him, by acting just as I should say he 
would send you to act, I think you must know what is right. 
I sent for Mr. Maurice yesterday. He would not say he 
did not believe as you do. He told me liberal Christianity 
would suffer a great loss if I left the Unitarians. I don’t 
care for that. It does nothing for me. Finally he told me 
I must follow my own convictions. I could see it cut him 
dreadfully, though he was too much of a gentleman to act 
badly about it. I wish you could get him.” “ But, my 
dear Sir, now you must think of your own case. I wish 
earnestly to baptize you, but I cannot do it merely because 
you trust in me.” “ I don’t trust in you ; I trust in the 
spirit that sent you. I see that you are young. I dare say 
you are like other young ministers, but this I do see, that 
you are in earnest, and mean what you say. If there is on 
earth a Church which Jesus Christ founded, I am sure you 
belong to that Church, and I want to belong to it, and I 
am ready to believe what it tells me to believe, and to do 
what it requires.” Winthrop talked long with him, but it 
always came round to that. At last he said, “ Next week 
the Doctor says you will be able to get out again. If you 
are in the same mind then, and will come to the Church on 
Wednesday morning, I will receive you.” The old man 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


225 


pressed his hand hard, wiped a tear or two from liis eyes, 
and bade him good-by. 

Winthrop hesitated long whether to tell Maurice, but at 
last one night as they sat together, he spoke. “ To-morrow 
I am going to baptize Mr. Graham. I hope you won’t think 
I have been unfair to you.” “No,” said Maurice, “ I did 
think so, but I see his mind k made up — it has been more 
weakened by his illness than i thought. Still if he goes, I 
am afraid my work here is broken up.” He rose and paced 
the room in agitation. “ My salary won’t be paid, that I 
don’t care for. I have enough to live on, but there are 
other things. I shall fight it out fairly, only I can’t put 
heart into it while I feel so uncertain myself. I can preach, 
but I cannot say anything to people. I cannot get hold of 
them as you do. The fact is — I — I wish I could feel, as 
you seem to do, that I was really a minister. I went to 
Ralston the other day, and he gave me a long dissertation 
upon the right of the people to make me a minister, but 
when I pressed him upon this point why they could not 
unmake me, he did not or would not meet it. Told me it 
W'Ould be time enough to think of it when they did. I asked 
‘ Could 1 become a Congregation alist if I would accept his 
confession of faith ?’ He told me that just then he thought 
I should not find an opening among them ; they had more 
licentiates than paying parishes among them, but, if I 
thought of trying it, he would give me letters to the New 
Haven professors. ‘ But,’ added he, ‘ if I were you, Mau- 
rice, I would go into the Episcopal Schism.’ Winthrop, I 
won’t do that, at least not now. I will stand out to the last 
— you have beaten me here, I give you fair warning that 1 
shall beat you when I can.” He left Winthrop’s room 
abruptly. 

The next morning, however, he was at St. Jude’s as the 
bell was ringing. Mr. Graham’s carriage stood at the door. 
He entered the church in time to see the old gentleman 
move slowly up the aisle, supported by his daughter. 
Maurice walked firmly, almost defiantly up one of the side 
aisles, and took one of the sqfuare wall pews, which filled 
the corner near the chancel — the old family pew in fact of 
the family who owned the estate on the point, and once 
great patrons of St. Jude’s. The daughter, Miss Graham^ 
£ai uumovingly through the service. Maurice watched her 


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intently. She ^vas a fashionably-dressed girl, a showy 
brunette. He had had several talks with her, and she had 
been rather interested in his ritual plans, and had joined 
heartily in his improved liturgy. But in the morning 
prayer of the church she would take no part. Maurice, 
too, refused to give way to the impulse that he naturally 
felt, and for the first time for many months neither knelt 
nor united in the Confession or the Lord’s Prayer. He 
turned restlessly over the leaves of the prayer-book till he 
came to the Baptism of Adults. Gray-haired Dr. Donne 
paused after the second lesson, and then stepped out of the 
desk to the front. Winthrop called for the candidate. 
Mr. Graham came forward alone. Miss Graham let fall 
her veil suddenly. To Maurice’s great surprise Dr. Donne 
took his place by the side of the candidate as witness, and 
tenderly found the places for him in the book which Gra- 
ham held with an unsteady hand. The congregation rose 
at the first words of the exhortation, which Winthrop read 
with a voice of deep emotion. The congregation were 
greatly touched. Tears were running down the Doctor’s 
cheeks. One old as himself was taking the vows he had 
offered to so many during the long and blameless years of 
his ministry. It was with an almost inaudible voice that 
the candidate made the promises, but very fervently. Then, 
when he knelt and his white hair touched the marble of the 
font scarcely whiter, and his hand clasped Winthrop’s, 
while the two surpliced priests stood beside him, the one so 
youthful with so deep and spiritual an awe upon his beau- 
tiful face, the other so noble and so loving, and when the 
clear water fell upon the aged bowed head, Maurice felt his 
breath come thick and fast. Was he, could he remain an 
outcast from a church like this? Was he to continue un- 
signed with the sign of the cross, no member of the congre- 
gation of Christ’s flock? 

The service was ended, and the few worshippers, some 
twenty or thirty, were dispersing, as Maurice left the porch 
of St. Jude’s. He joined one of them, a young lady he 
had met at one of the little musical parties which Norowam 
is given to. She greeted him with a look of surprise. 
“You here?” she said: “I did not expect to meet yow,” and 
then hesitated, recollecting that the Grahams had been 
members of his society. “Yes,” said he, “I came to take 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


227 


farewell of a friend.” “Not farewell, I hope,” she replied 
gently. “Yes,” said he, with a tinge of bitterness, “if my 
old parishioner has been received into the congregation of 
Christ’s flock, he has left me outside. I am to him as a 
heathen-man and a publican.” “It is your own choice if 
you stay so — do you not believe in baptism?” “I do not 
know what I believe in, certainly not much in myself” 
“No, Mr. Maurice,” said one behind them, and Maud De- 
Forrest came to their side — “No, Mr. Maurice, you do not 
believe in yourself, and I am thankful for it. You have 
been doing so too long; that has been your trouble. You 
are struggling now with the old feeling of personal pride 
and independence; you are unwilling to submit yourself” 
“Why should I submit to Alf Winthrop, who is younger 
and certainly no wiser than I am ; or to Dr. Donne, who is 
an old proser and a bigoted conservative, who has not an 
idea outside his prayer-book?” Maurice knew that he was 
bitterly, grossly unjust, and a pang of conscience smote 
him, but he fancied the young ladies were triumphing over 
him, and he was determined to shock them. In truth he 
was very sore. He felt it had been pre-eminently his own 
failure. 

Miss Hale was shocked, and drew herself up coldly. But 
Maud read him better, and after a moment’s silence, turned 
the conversation. “I expect my uncle soon; he wants to 
see you very much ; he was so much pleased "with you 
abroad,” she said with great tact, “and I can never forget 
how kind you were to Frank.” Maud was dressed in slight 
mourning. Maurice had never noticed that before. He 
fancied that it was a recent change. She was a little paler 
than when they first met. “I am going to spend the winter 
here with Miss Hale. I shall be always happy to see you,” 
she continued. “What! a heretic like me?” was his reply, 
for his bitter mood was not appeased. “Yes, with all your 
heresies, which are not so deep as you fancy.” “I am not 
60 sure of that,” he said, and then being at his hotel-door, 
he bade the ladies an abrupt good morning, and went to 
his room in a very dissatisfied mood. For a time he did 
turn toward heresy. He took to studying Parker, and the 
advanced neologists, and would not enter the doors of St. 
Jude’s. He became morose and selfish. He could not sat- 
isfy himself with his new allies; their arguments appeared 


228 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


to lum both strained and unfair, but he clung to them des- 
perately and bitterly. Maud he saw now and then, but 
there was a shadow between them not lessened by the sharp 
and unkind satire covert in his words. He began to weary 
of his parochial work — his preaching and all. What was 
the use — why should he not go back to Europe? The fruits 
of a creedless faith were beginning to grow. 

The Christmas-tide recalled him. In the clear, cold, 
healthy weather he got time for reflection. He had just 
received and read that remarkable book of F. W. New- 
man’s, “The Soul,” and it revealed to him, as a precipice, 
the edge over which he was falling. He went to Winthrop, 
and frankly owned that he had been greatly and unfairly 
estranged from him, and by way of a peace-offering was 
present at the Christmas eve service of St. Jude’s, and 
would have gone the next morning had not the Feast of the 
Nativity that year fallen on Sunday. Also he heard with 
great equanimity that Mr. Graham had taken a pew in the 
church of St. Cyril’s, New York, and that Gertrude Gra- 
ham was to be confirmed with her father. Not so his own 
people. They were bitterly disappointed, and he had to 
run the gauntlet of various hard speeches. He was told, 
almost in so many words, that the defection of Mr. Graham 
was owing to his neglect to call on him in his sickness; he 
heard that he had been sent for, and refused to go to the 
Point, and that Mr. Winthrop had heard of it, and walked 
down in the storm through three feet of water. In vain 
did Winthrop deny the story. It was generally believed, 
and by none more than those who complained most loudly 
of his favoritism in visiting the Grahams. There was a 
neighboring Universalist minister very anxious to get to 
Norowam, who spent much of his week-day leisure in visit- 
ing and in cringing to Maurice’s congregation. 

It was not possible, in a small place like Norowam, to 
overlook the social attractiveness of a young man like Bryan 
Maurice. Not long after his coming, there was gathered a 
party of girls in the music-parlor of one of the handsomest 
houses of the place. It was about ten o’clock in the morn- 
ing. They had just come in from the church — for old St. 
Jude’s kept the litany days. One or two of the girls had 
taken off* their bonnets and thrown them upon the piano, 
and Ijad clustered together upon the sofa, with arms twined 


BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


22 ? 


about each other^s waists. It would be a pleasant task to 
sketch them all, for they had faces of marked character and 
individuality. They belonged to that class of girls that are 
found now and then in small towns, and perhaps in small sets 
ill cities — those who have grown up in comparative uncon- 
sciousness of the charms of male society. Girls who ride, 
or row, or skate, or study German, or sketch — not as 
accomplishments which shall render them attractive to men, 
but as pursuits into which they go with their whole heart — 
are not usually wanting in wit or agreeableness, unless it be 
that superficial polish of manner which may varnish the 
most repulsive feminine natures. “ Girls, I’m going to have 
a party next week, and I’m going to have somebody that 
can do something besides dance. I never saw such a place 
for gentlemen, lliere goes Mr. Maurice — I will make Henry 
call and invite him.” This came from the fair-haired blonde, 
Ernestine, the most impulsive of all. “ But, Erne, dear,” 
said Adah, “ it won’t do — he’s a Universalist minister.” — 
“ I don’t care for that ; if he was the Catholic priest, I don’t 
see why he shouldn’t come to a party. You needn’t go to 
his church, and I am not afraid to tell him so. But just 
see here, girls. I want to know what you think about this 
thing. Here are we girls expected to be very good, and not 
know when a young man is dissipated, though you can 
almost feel it in )mur bones when one like Ned Beverly 
comes near you. We must meet them in society, and think 
nothing about it ; but when a young man who is as pure and 
good as can be comes to town, and is really entertaining and 
cultivated, we mustn’t have anything to say to him. I 
suupose it is all right, but I don’t see that a wicked Episco- 
palian is so much better than a good Universalist.” “You 
had better,” said Hortense, “ ask Mr. Winthrop about that.” 
Some of the girls laughed slyly. Ernestine went eagerly 
on, as was her wont, “ I’m sure he goes with him all the 
time — besides, Gerty Graham says he is the most agreeable 
young man she has met these two years. Besides, he comes 
to morning prayers very often indeed.” — “ Only twice. Erne, 
since he came.” — “ Well, twice in two months is a good deal 
for him.” 

So the end was, that Ernestine, with her wilfulness and 
impetuosity did have Maurice invited to her party. His 
going gave great scandal to a part of his flock. Ernestincr 
20 


230 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


Ayling moved in a circle quite apart from the village people, 
and though ready enough to meet on frank terms all, what- 
ever their rank, in her own church — indeed, she would go 
down into the cellar of a poor sick Irishwoman, and tend 
her crying babies by the hour — she chose to keep aloof from 
the rest, and she showed it very clearly. 

Into the elegant drawing-rooms of her father’s house, the 
good people of the first Universalist Society never set foot. 
The elder people were rather proud of the social success of 
their minister. The younger ones, who, at first, were 
delighted to find that he did not take them to task for 
attending village “ hops,” and “ sociables,” and negro-min- 
strel concerts and semi-theatrical shows, began to feel that 
he belonged to them, and had no business where they could 
not go. They wanted to keep him to themselves, w^hile 
they were afraid of him withal. He was of a social culture 
far beyond them. He evidently did not sympathize with 
their romping flirtations. When he tried to talk of religious 
matters, he was out of their depths. There w^as no objective 
life of a visible church upon which he could meet them. 
Winthrop for all his young people had plenty of topics — 
their Sunday-school classes, their district visitings, greens at 
Christmas, lilies at Easter, the proper ways of joining in the 
service, the plain Bible teachings in which, at his weekly 
class, he interested them without bewildering them. Win- 
throp could meet each and all without reserve or embarrass- 
ment or weariness, though by birth and temperament 
aristocratic to a degree. 

Maurice found that, while his young people received him 
with apparent cordiality at their homes, they were awed 
and mystified at his approaches. He had nothing positive 
to lead them to. On general topics he could not meet them. 
Their simple enthusiasm over Tupper and Mrs. South- 
worth’s novels, and the thin fictions of the “ Ledger” and 
“ Weekly” and Ladies’ Magazines, he dashed with uncon- 
scious epigrammatic sharpness of ridicule. He had laughed 
heartily and publicly over certain sentimental verses in the 
poet’s corner of the village newspaper in the presence of 
the unlucky authoress, — of course, in all innocence, — and 
mortally offended her. He underrated their culture, super- 
ficial as it was, and was annoyed and repelled by their 
ignorance of the matters which his exclusive but elevated 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


231 


Harvard training deemed the essentials of all education. 
Still his manners were so good, his politeness so genuine, 
that they resented, all the more for their awe of him, his 
capture, as they regarded it, by those proud and exclusive 
city people. 

Maurice went to the party at the Aylings’ and enjoyed 
himself exceedingly. He met Maud De Forrest, who de- 
clined dancing in his favor, and sat with him half the 
evening by the window which opened into the beautiful 
conservatory, and through whose glass walls they caught 
glimpses of the moonlight sleeping on the fair lawn, and 
throwing deep shadows among the belts of shrubbery. 
They talked of Europe, of course; and as the conversation 
strayed into other channels, Maud gave him rapt attention 
which both flattered and yet puzzled him. It was not 
girlish fascination, however. He could not help noting that, 
while she watched him most closely, it was not with sympa- 
thizing eagerness. He came to suspect — and it startled his 
amour propre — that she was drawing him out. Yet it did 
not seem to be in order that she might reply. When he let 
fall a paradox, it met no answering dissent. She seemed 
to note it a moment, and then to let it pass by, occasionally 
asking a question or making a comment which simply tested 
his sincerity. Now and then she could not conceal that she 
knew more of him than he had supposed. She allowed, 
nay, encouraged him to talk of his plans in his ministry, — 
indeed, seemed to take greater interest in that than in aught 
else concerning him. The thought crossed his mind at last 
that she was seeking the Unitarian fold. He made ready 
at once to use the chance, and waxed eloquent upon his 
hopes and visions of an improved liberal Christianity. She 
met it most unexpectedly. “ Are you so happy, Mr. Mau- 
rice, so contented in your new faith, that you would wish 
me or any other to partake it? Are you so certain your- 
self, that you feel you could give me, for the one hope of 
my life, any thing clearer and better?” 

She looked him fixedly in the face, and w^aited for his 
reply. None came. He could not say yes. He did not 
like to say no. Her eyes fell, and the color rose to her 
cheeks. She drew a quick breath, and then a smile played 
around her beautiful mouth, — the unfathomable smile of a 
young girl’s happy thought. Then she said simply, without 


232 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


a shade of coquetry, “You must not think you have tired 
me. I like to talk to you very much, but we must not 
monopolize each other. Let me introduce you to that lady 
on the sofa opposite. She is a dear friend of mine who is 
soon going abroad, and would like to hear about what she 
is to see.” So Maurice was taken across the room, and 
presently found himself giving, as he was ready enough to 
do, descriptions of Oxford and the English cathedrals to an 
untiring listener. “ Oh, Mr. Maurice, how you must have 
wished,” she said, after a brilliant sketch of Canterbury, 
“ how you must have wished it was your church ! I don’t 
see how you could have come back a Unitarian.” 

“ Perhaps I did not,” he said. “ What do you fancy a 
Unitarian to be?” “Oh! but I can see that you did not 
love these things because they were true, but because they 
were beautiful. You smiled just now at my delight over 
St. Jude’s. Of course, I know that it is not to be compared 
at all with those glorious churches, but it is the same home. 
I should not be a stranger there, because this can speak to 
my heart.” “ But the English service is not the same, — 
it is quite different, especially in the cathedrals.” “ Oh ! 
but it is the same. This house, you know, is not like a 
nobleman’s castle, but still it is a house in which one lives. 
The lesser differences go for nothing. It is not like the tent 
of a menagerie, where one could never be at home.” 

The young girl blushed and looked frightened, as if she 
had been unintentionally rude. Maurice caught the drift 
of her thought. “ You mean that we Unitarians are some- 
what of wild beasts, and not at home in drawing-rooms. 
Well, I get your point. I’m not sure but that you are 
right. I certainly felt so the first time I went to a Roman 
Catholic church abroad.” “ Oh ! pray forgive me if I have 
said anything rude, — indeed, I did not mean that at all. I 
only wanted to explain why I shall feel when I go to an 
English cathedral as if I belonged to it and it to me.” “ I 
think I understand yon,” he said, gravely, “and I am not 
in the least offended. You know I am trying to make my 
own tent a little more habitable ; perhaps it may bring me 
in time to the Orthodox house. At present, you see, I like 
it, because I can pitch it where I will, and that is a great 
compensation for having to live in it with the big bears and 
the noisy monkeys : — ” which "saucy speech the young lady 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


233 


could not resist repeating again ; and it was carried, in due 
time, to the ears of some of the first Unitarian families in his 
congregation, in that distorted shape such sayings always are ; 
and it was told that Mr. Maurice had said at the Aylings’ 
party that his people were bears and monkeys, and that his 
church was no better than a circus tent. 

Some of the young gentlemen of the company made a 
little too free with the champagne at supper, and the legend 
was forthwith added that Mr. Maurice, who certainly was 
in the supper-room with all the other guests, and joined 
Winthrop and Ralston in a single glass of their host’s Old 
Madeira, was one of the party who laughed and talked so 
noisily in going home. He had gone quietly home long 
before ; but the Methodist minister of Norowam, who was 
a fierce teetotaller, made much of the story in his Sunday 
night’s discourse the next week. He was afraid to allude 
to Ralston, who could give as good as he got, and liked 
Winthrop ; so he singled out poor Maurice, as an Uni- 
versalist who was outside the pale of evangelical brother- 
hood. 

He made a striking and brilliant use of the parable of 
Lazarus and the Rich Man, whose name, he informed his 
hearers, was Dives (pronounced as a monosyllable), and 
dwelt upon the denial of one drop of water to cool the 
tongue, “ which was all burned up by the fever of drinkin’ 
and drunkenness.” 

Maurice laughed when he heard of it ; but the scandal 
stuck as scandals do. It did not affect his own people 
much, but it checked his rising popularity with the young 
people of that floating class who go to all places of worship 
in indiscriminate religious dissipation, and who had liked 
the enthusiasm and elegance of his preaching. 

For Maurice preached well, and there was a freshness 
about his other services while they were fresh to him, which 
was quite unlike the droning ways of the regular hacks of 
extempore worship, — so called. The trouble was, they 
would not stay fresh to himself, because he lacked the true 
basis of worship, — a fixed faith. 

Had he no faith? He sometimes asked himself that 
question, bitterly enough. He had ; but it was in advance 
of his practice. He was ever trying to realize something 
from which he found himself held back. Every Sunday 


234 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


night left him feverish and dissatisfied. He tried to incul- 
cate a high, unselfish morality, but that ever haunted him 
with tlie idea that it was not enough. It had no answer to 
the obstinate question “ why ?” Besides, there was a hard 
practical soil of common-place Universalism in his littlo 
flock, upon which he could make no impression. They 
w^ere not worse than their accepted standards of duty ; but 
nothing would lift them above these. 

Toward spring his congregation began to wane. They 
wanted coarser and stronger aliment. “ Why don’t he 
pitch into the doctrine of the Trinity, or go it strong against 
hell-fire?” they said; “we’ve had enough of the beauty of 
lioliness.” Having nothing better to do, they revived the 
old stories about Ayling’s party; and finally one bold male- 
content, who had been long in favor of the Universalist 
brother who ministered up at Batestown, ventured to tell 
Maurice that he had better resign. Maurice was stung by 
it. In vain his managing man laughed at it, and promised 
to stick by Maurice to the last, and that when the city 
folks came up in the summer, the Church of St. Arius, as 
Maurice aflfected to call it, would be full to overflowing. 
He brooded over it continually. So one fair evening, as 
he was walking up the main street, he saw in the distance 
Mrs. Mehitable West, the most dreaded of all his female 
enemies, and the sharpest-tongued gossip, approaching him. 
Like a wise man, he turned and fled, or rather walked 
swiftly away, and, ere he bethought of himself, he had 
come to the wall of the little burial-ground by which were 
rising the almost completed walls of the chapel of St. 
Mark’s. He paused by the old stone wall, and looked over 
into the weedy and neglected resting-place of the dead of 
the Episcopal Church. He saw a female figure in the act 
of laying something upon one of the graves. A second 
look showed him Maud He Forrest. A strong impulse 
sent him to her side. She looked up from her work, which 
was the adjustment of a wreath of immortelles upon a tomb- 
stone, and greeted him quietly. “ ‘Memento mori’ I see is 
your motto, to-night,” said he ; “I should think. Miss De 
Forrest, that it is rather a serious task for one so young.” 
“ Mr. Maurice, that is not a fitting speech for you, since we 
both have reason to remember the early dead in the Lord. 
I am thinking of the lonely cemetery at Rome, and you 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER 


235 


surely liave not forgotten the Atlantic waves.” The words 
thrilled Maurice with a sudden shame. “ I shall never 
forget the one nor the other,” said he, hurriedly. “Then 
why forget the faith that made those deaths so happy? 
Mr. Maurice, I must speak to you. God has put this 
chance into my hands. We both have buried our hearts. 
I can speak to you as a sister would, without maidenly 
shame for speaking earnestly. Frank was to me all that 
Ellen was to you.” (Maurice had told her the story of 
his homeward voyage.) “ Parental opposition, founded on 
a foolish political quarrel, separated us. It is right you 
should know that, though it half kills me to recall it. I 
shall always remain his widow in spirit. Now you can 
understand why I may interest myself in you. You are 
his legacy to me, — and your welfare is very precious for his 
sake.” Tears came into her sweet eyes as she spoke. She 
went on : “You are in the wrong place. I went to hear 
you preach last Sunday night. I do not think it right for 
me to do so ordinarily, though you have often asked me. 
I could not enter a place of worship which, in its whole 
service, denies all I hold dear. Let me say out my say if 
you please,” she said, as he was about to speak. “ I did go 
to hear you, — not from curiosity, — but because I wanted to 
know w’here you really stood. Had I believed that you were 
a Unitarian preacher for life, I would never have listened 
to you. Something my cousin Winthrop told me made nie 
doubt. I am now certain that you will not be one. Every 
line of your sermon was a record of the battle in your own 
mind. You were trying not to convince your flock, but 
yourself. It satisfied them, — thank God, it did not satisfy 
you ! I saw it in your face when you ended.” 

Maurice had yielded to the desire for a polemical dis- 
course on the part of his people, and it was even as she had 
said. He had fought the Unitarian battle, and, in his 
strong conscientiousness, had lost it. And this young girl 
had read him truly. They were standing where they 
could look through the empty arches of the windows of the 
chapel, into which the rising moon, near the full, was shin- 
ing. “Something tells me, Mr. Maurice,” she continued, 
“ that you will yet kneel at the altar which shall be conse- 
crated there.” The same thought w^ent through his mind 
just ere sue spcke. 


236 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


“ Tell me,” lie said, entreatingly, “ by what art you are 
so reading my very soul.” — “ By no art — I cannot help 
seeing it.” — “Yes,” he said sadly, after a pause, “you are 
right. I am in doubt, and that sermon made me resolve, 
never to preach another, almost. I see that this system of 
ours does not help me to do the things I am set to do. I 
cannot visit the sick, or save men from evil ways, or com- 
fort those in trouble, or even teach the little ones, because 
of perpetual doubt. I see your cousin Winthrop, who is no 
better man than I — I mean in mind — in his simple way, 
doing all these things, and I do see that there is a power 
behind him by which he does them.” “ He believes in his 
office,” she said, “ and you do not. He has a faith to preach, 
and you only a system of nicely balanced denials.” “ But 
why have I no faith ? I know I have not — but why ? I 
have the Bible as well as he.” 

“Because you lack the keystone of your arch. Before a 
line of the Gospels was written, the foremost Apostle con- 
fessed his Lord, saying, ‘ Thou art the Christ, the Sou of 
the living God.’ Surely more was wrapped up in that say- 
ing, which flesh and blood had not revealed unto him, but 
the Father in heaven — a saying for which his Lord pro- 
nounced him ‘ blessed’ — than that Jesus of Nazareth was a 
teacher, or even the teacher of righteousness. But you long 
ago gave your heart to the Master ; give Him your faith 
now : — believe that He did not leave his Church comfort- 
less, without certain knowledge of Him.” “ Where is his 
Church ?” asked Maurice. “ The Church of the Apostles — 
the Church which holds to apostolic faith and practice. 
Not the future ideal Church which men are always going 
to rear ; but the one once built — the Church that is weak, 
imperfect, sinful, because of men and for men ; but divine 
because given by God. The Church that is not cumbered 
with expedients of much serving ; but sitting at the Lord’s 
feet and learning of him. But I must return home. Will 
you kindly see me to my own door, for it is late for me ?” 

Maurice could only bow, and they left the spot. Maud 
was silent, and he felt he could not speak. She, though he 
knew it not, was inwardly praying — he was repeating to 
himself her words over and over again. As they reached, 
the house, in the pleasant bowery street, a tall gentleman 
met them at the gate. “ Oh ! uncle, have you come ? I am 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


237 


SO glad !” exclaimed she. “ Uncle, this is IMr. Maurice, and 
you are in the right time.” And Maurice met the proffered 
hand of Gardiner with a clasp in the energy of which was 
the first joy of a returning hope. 

“ Come in, come in,” said Gardiner. “ I cannot,” said 
Maurice; “I must go to my room to-night. I half expect 
a friend from the city, and must not be out.” Maud’s 
countenance fell. “ I am sorry for it, for it is no one I care 
much to see, and I shall have to be at home all the even- 
ing.” Maurice had plead the excuse in a sudden attack of 
shyness. A talk with Gardiner was what he had been 
longing for, yet he dreaded it. “ Cannot I see you to-mor- 
row?” he said. “No, I go to the city in the morning. I 
only stopped over to see my niece and Winthrop. I am 
sorry, too, for I hoped for a chat with you, and was quite 
rejoiced when I saw you coming down the street.” 

Maurice stood irresolute. “I can spare you, uncle,” said 
Maud. There was a meaning tone in her voice which the 
quick ear of Gardiner caught. “ Come,” said he, “ I won’t 
lose the chance ; your friend can’t be up till half past nine?” 
“No,” said Maurice. “Very well, then. I’ll come up to 
your room, and sit till then.” 

Maurice did not decline, and Gardiner went with him to 
his room. When they were comfortably established there, 
Gardiner began: “Well, my young friend, you are just 
where I expected to find you.” “ What, in Norowarn ?” 
said Maurice, astonished. “No, of course not; I mean in 
the Unitarian ministry. Have you found your ideal of a 
church ?” “ No, sir, I have not.” “ Are you contented ?” 

“ No, sir, the furthest from it.” “ The first thing you have to 
do is to get out of it at once ; you have determined the thing 
you were in doubt upon when we met in Rome — whether to 
be a Christian ; I take that for granted by finding you in 
the ministry.” “Then, sir,” said Maurice, jumping at the 
supposed admission, “ you grant me to be a Christian minis- 
ter ?” “ Oh, no ! it shows a Christian purpose in you, that 

is all ; but the intent cannot make the accomplishment. You 
might determine to be a lawyer; but, if you studied the 
jurisprudence of China, that would hardly fit you for the 
American bar. If you purposed to be a physician, but 
per^fsted in taking up only quack science, you would not be 
one. There is but one Christian ministiy — that established 


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by Christ and his apostles. There can be but one.” “ But 
how am I to find that ? many claim to be.” “ Go back to 
first principles.” “But none are agreed upon those.” 
“Pardon me, all are agreed; it is upon secondary results 
that men begin to quarrel.” Maurice looked, as he felt, 
bewildered. “ It is a simple question of history.” “ But 
historians differ.” “No, there is but one history, the New 
Testament; you receive that as authority?” “Yes, sir.” 
“ Very well, then, that is settled. Now take the Book of 
the Acts ; does that speak of a church to be, or of one that 
is? Clearly of one in being. ‘The Lord added daily to 
the Church.’ Then what are we to look for in that book ; 
rules for making a church, accounts of the formation of a 
church, or allusion to one already formed? Which was 
first, the Church or the book?” “The Church, I suppose,” 
said Maurice, after a pause. “So far, so good. Now, if 
those recognitions correspond to certain established facts, 
purporting to relate back to that period, tally with them, 
do they not prove the origin of the facts, and that they were 
pre-existent to the record?” “ They do.” Furthermore, if 
you find these same facts continued in the Epistles, written 
still later on, do they not confirm the others?” “ Yes, sir.” 
“For instance, when St. Paul writes from Ephesus to Corinth 
concerning the right way to observe the Lord’s supper, can 
you not see, that there was a Church there already practic- 
ing that rite, something for his letter to be addressed to, and 
for it to be about?” “ I see that,” said Maurice ; “ I wonder 
I never saw it before.” “ Easily enough, because your 
Bible was put into your hand as a talisman, an oracle, not 
as a revealed history. Now turn to that history. You find 
officers mentioned by titles — apostles, presbyters, and dea- 
cons ; you find a laity also ; you find the mention of baptism 
as the sacrament of initiation ; you find a formula of faith 
alluded to.” “ Stop, there comes in a doubt. If there be 
such an one, why not give in full ?” “ For the reason I just 
gave you ; it was already in practice, and for another reason 
to come presently. 

“Belief is recmired, is it not?” “Yes, sir.” “ Belief in 
what? Not in Christian principles,” said Gardiner, seeing 
Maurice hesitate. “ Those are results, not starting points. 
The starting point is belief in a person. Very well, then, 
to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, must you not know 


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soraetliing about Him ? Put yourself into the position cf a 
Greek Gentile, and imagine me Apollos of Alexandria 
telling you to believe on Him, would not your first question 
be as to what you ought to believe?” “Yes, of course.” 
“ Should I not have to tell you what He was ?” “You would 
send me to the Bible.” “ But I have no Bible. There is 
no Greek New Testament yet written, and you could not 
understand my Hebrew Scriptures, even in the version of 
the Septuagint. I must tell you facts, and those facts I 
must put in a shape for you to remember easily, and dwell 
on daily. They must be also essential facts ; and do not 
essential facts imply others? Ho they not — and what I 
meant to say is just this — do they not imply the further 
statements which shall limit them against further contra- 
dictions ?” 

“ I do not quite see that.” “ Let me put it for you a 
little more explicitly. I tell you that Jesus Christ wa-s 
crucified, dead, and buried. Some false teacher — let us say 
my former disciple, Apollinarius we will call him — some 
false teache-r tells you that Christ did not really die ; only a 
phantom suffered on the cross. Remember you are a Greek ; 
and this whole debate touches upon the one vital point 
which can interest you — the resurrection of the body. Hoes 
not this require me, as an authoritative teacher, to show 
you that He w^as man as well as God — born of the Virgin 
Mary, as well as conceived of the Holy Ghost?” 

“ I see,” said Maurice. “ Then you must grant a creed 
to be the only way to show that you did believe. You are 
not, as now-a-days, supposed to believe, because you read a 
Bible. You find it a very vital question, outside or inside 
the Church, is what it turns upon.” 

“ Well, I see a creed is necessary; I am not disposed to 
fight that : but the extra-scriptural language of the Nicene 
Creed is another matter ; there is my true difficulty. I have 
been an Arian, I think.” “ The Council of Nice did not 
change : it only affirmed the faith of the Church. Extra- 
scriptural denials required extra-scriptural terms to re-affirm 
the unchanged faith.” “Can you prove that?” “Cer- 
tainly. Read the history of that Council, and you will 
see.” “ But there was no affirmation by the Lord’s own 
lips of His Hivinity.” 

“ Pardon me ! there was. There was assumption by Him 


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of the prerogatives of Divinity. Forgiveness of sins by 
His own personal authority, for one. He was underetood 
by the Jews to claim that position. ‘ Thou, being a man, 
niakest thyself God,’ was their accusation.” “ Why did 
He not explicitly claim that, then?” “For the best of 
reasons. If they could not see the proof that was in His 
works, to which He constantly referred them. His bare 
assertion would have carried no weight. I have always 
regarded the indirectness of the Lord’s reply a most con- 
vincing proof. He was leading them, if they could, to 
work out the conclusion themselves. He always taught 
the public in that manner ; sowing the seeds of truth, as it 
were, out of sight that they might grow. The Divinity of 
the Lord is taught explicitly by St. John, who expressly 
affirmed it. We know that, because it is in answer to 
denials. The Word, the Logos, which we know from the 
controversies of the time means only Christ, is declared by 
him to be God. Then what was the first denial ? Not of 
the Lord’s Divinity, but of His Humanity. Now that 
shows most plainly that the Church did not hold that He 
was neither God nor man.” “Well, I waive the creeds.” 
“But will you not receive them? Will you not concede 
that the Church held them both, apostolic faith and apos- 
tolic order? Could it hold anything else?” “No, sir.” 
“ Then when there is now in being a Church which claims 
original descent, and shows for her claim the Holy Scrip- 
tures, a present ministry, and the unchanged faith, has it 
no claim upon you?” “Yes, sir; but what becomes then 
of one’s liberty of conscience, of free opinion ?” “ Have 

you liberty to hold a falsehood ?” “ No, &ir, not in con- 

science,” said Maurice, after a thoughtful pause. “ Does it 
not, then, mean free opinion to choose the right?” “But 
suppose I do not choose?” “Then you take the conse- 
quence, which puts you where you are.” 

“ But you say,” said Bryan, trying to work away from 
the position, “ you say apostolic Order : that always seemed 
to me an unfounded assumption on the part of your Church.” 
“Why unfounded? What is the meaning of the word 
* Apostle ?’ I need not tell you to define that.” “ One sent, 
of course,” said Maurice. “ Now turn to the Epistles to the 
Seven Churches of Asia. What are they called there? 
‘ Angels,’ that is, messengers — the same idea only modified, 


BRYAls MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


241 


more personal to the office. You have the two sides of the 
thoug^ht — the one sent, the one who bears the message, who 
may be rernoved one step from the original commission.” 

“ But I never,” said Bryan, “ understood the Angels of 
the Churches to mean men ; I thought it was a figurative 
personifying of the Church.” Gardiner smiled. “Well 
done. New England ! I hope you are willing to accept the 
new exegesis, since, in some parts of the Church Catholic, 
the title has been preserved to this day, or was till lately. 
Now take the movement of the idea : first, the founders 
of Christianity were to be witnesses of the kingdom, then 
preachers of the kingdom, then administrators of the king- 
dom. The next step is to call the same officer the repre- 
sentative head of the Church, the overseer — Episcopos — 
marking the change of the Church from a missionary to a 
permanent estate. It would be a parallel case, if we called 
our first bishops in this country, who were consecrated 
abroad. Apostles, as sent from the Mother Church ; our 
missionary bishops, Angels ; and when they became diocesan 
or see bishops, Episcopals — Bishops.” 

“Yes,” said Maurice; “but I have always thought that 
the apostles were distinct in office as well as in name.” 
“ Only in this, they were witnesses, a power which was per- 
sonal and could not descend. And they Avere founders, a 
prerogative which could not be repeated. So the first kings 
of a dynasty are founders, but that does not prevent their 
successors from being kings. Royalty descends: primal 
position does not, of course. But look at another point. 
Who were the pseudo-apostles — false, sham apostles ? Just 
mark the significance of that fact. They belong to a little 
later period of the Church. Do you suppose that they were 
men who personated the original twelve ? That would be 
a trick unmasked at once. It was only to confront them 
with a witness who had known the real parties, to demand 
a miracle, and they would be exposed. Do you think St. 
Paul would have hesitated at that? Does he anywhere 
write ‘ Certain have come to you, pretending to be Peter or 
James or John ; but James is dead, and Peter is in the East, 
and John is with me here in Ephesus, and will shortly come 
to you?’ No: what these false apostles claimed was the 
office, not the personality, of the twelve. Now, nothing 
could be more improbable than the one deception should be 
21 


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ever attempted ; nothing more likely than that the other 
would be. The See-Episcopate not yet being established 
and defined, and the original apostolate increased by the 
ministry to the Gentiles, tliere is just one time when this 
pseudo-apostolate is possible, between the dawning and the 
daylight of the Church. Now the point I make is just 
here : these men would not have attempted a pretence, by 
its very nature, baseless. Hence it follows, that there could 
be true apostles not of the original twelve, or, like St. Paul, 
specially commissioned. We do not counterfeit bank-notes 
for countries having no paper-currency : the forgery proves 
a true original. For instance, if it were in doubt whether 
there were original Gospels in existence at a particular date 
the existence of apocryphal Gospels goes far to prove the 
tact.” 

Maurice saw the point, but fought hard. He was not 
now a seeker open to all phases of truth, but standing on 
his own ground of prejudice. “It seems to me,” he said, 
“more natural that these separate church communities 
should have organized themselves. What possible sympathy 
could there be between scholastic Athens and commercial 
Corinth, Asian Ephesus and the stern imperialism of Rome? 
I rather judge that the different church systems which are 
organic and representative sprang up about the same time, 
originating from different sources, and called into being by 
diverse social necessities. These were afterwards hardened 
into one concrete form by the usurpations of the hierarchy, 
which then developed into the patriarchate and the pa- 
pacy.” 

There came an amused look over Gardiner’s face as he 
listened, and at the end he broke out into a laugh. “Ex- 
cuse me, but I cannot help enjoying your idea. I suppose 
the church at Ephesus must then have been episcopal, at 
Corinth congregational (there were certainly proceedings 
somewhat savoring of Independency until the hierarchy, in 
the person of Bishop Paul of Tarsus, put a heavy hand on 
them.) We should look for Quakei*s at Philadelphia, if 
anywhere ; and as for Athens, why not let us say, liberal 
Christians, who did not believe the resurrection of the dead? 
But, seriously, I am glad to see that you have thought upon 
the matter from that point of view. There is a profound 
truth in what you have said just now. It is just what 


BKYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


243 


would have resulted had Christianity in the mere form of 
doctrine taken root in these different centres, viz., an inde- 
pendent growth of conflicting systems; but, mark my Avords, 
if it had taken root. That was just as impossible as to 
make corn grow on an iceberg from seeds let fill by pass- 
ing birds. However, let me examine your position in full.’^ 
And Gardiner drew himself up with the look of one who 
feels that the day is his owm, seeing that the enemy has left 
a fatal gap in his centre. “In the first place, your theory 
of differences needs modification. There were to all these 
places unity of law and community of language. That 
you admit. Then there was the great solvent of the He- 
brew element in all these. The basis of almost every Gen- 
tile church was its Hebrew converts. Your thought is of 
the west, western. You fancy a number of men educated 
upon the Christian basis forming their mere ecclesiastical 
clubs as it were according to their own notions. But the 
church came to all these communities ready-formed. There 
was nothing to go upon on the part of the converts, but 
what they received. They could originate nothing, possess- 
ing nothing beforehand. Can you not see how utterly im- 
possible it would be for any Christian truth to come to 
them except through institutions? Now just take St. Paul 
arriving at Corinth. He embodies the church in himself. 
He has the ordaining power; he possesses the doctrine. He 
has the right to baptize and administer the sacraments. 
Uhi apostolos ibi ecclesia. What does he begin to preach ? 
An aw'akening sermon, calling on the Gentiles to repent of 
their sins? What sins? Shall he talk to the Spartan of 
the Avickedness of theft, or to the Corinthian of the Avrong 
of worshipping idols, of sacrificing to Venus? He is met 
by a morality alien in all things to his OAvn. The devout 
Corinthian religiously practices the very things most hate- 
ful to Christianity. Where shall he find the one vulnera- 
ble opening? The resurrection of the body. There is the 
one point, the tangible promise, all can appreciate and feel. 
The Greek loved his body, and cherished it. He desired 
immortality, and dreaded the gloomy Hades of shadoAVS. 
The miracle attested the teacher. The promise so sealed 
was all-p(»Averful. Then came the inquiry how to obtain it. 
*Hoav shall I,’ asked the hearer, ‘gain this new life?’ ‘Be- 
lieve on the Lord Jesus,’ is the answer. ‘Who is He?’ asks 


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the disciple. He is told — there you have the Creed — ‘ Be- 
lieve, and be baptized.’ ‘ I am ready for baptism.’ ‘ Bepent, 
and forsake your old life.’ He is ready enough for that 
also. The old Creed is outworn; the gods are dead; the 
old faith is a jargon of philosophies, or a tissue of legends. 
He is baptized. Into what? Into a living society, into an 
order, into a community. Look at the dissensions of the 
Corinthian church, and you will see what they presuppose. 
‘Were ye baptized into the name of Paul?’ No, into the 
Christian Church, into allegiance to a person, into a king- 
dom. Then men put on institutions which developed, of 
course, as numbers were added — that, of course — but 
developed according to apostolic authority. ‘The rest will 
I set in order when I come.’ Here is a very living episco- 
pate. And, if you think this power personal to St. Paul, 
read his epistles to Timothy and Titus, and see how the 
same rule was transmitted to them. Christianity could 
come only in a tangible form — that of an institution. Take 
the next point. Could that institution have varied with 
the different localities? Certainly not, in any essential, 
radical points. There must have been everywhere the 
great leading features, since there were affiliated societies. 
Men going from one to the other, contributions passing to 
and fro, everywhere the same central facts, the sacraments, 
the Creed, the ministry, all instituted by Christ himself. 
When out of the mutual antagonism of Jew and Gentile 
there is trouble, the first General Council is called — to 
arrange a concordat between different evangelical sects? 
No, to make a law for the whole Church. Again, do you 
not see another necessity? There was but one safeguard 
against transgression of Christian morality and discipline 
— excommunication. That is powerless, upon your suppo- 
sition. What would it amount to, if there existed no body 
to be expelled from, or if a dozen other bodies stood ready 
to take up the new member as a persecuted man? There 
was no general Christian sentiment as now; leaving the 
community and making ecclesiastical censure not without 
effect even among non-believers. One Lord, one Faith, one 
Baptism, was the watchword of a church, which must be at 
unity in order even to live, much more to grow.” 

“ Why, the great battle of St. Paul’s life was to merge in 
one the Gentile and Jewish elements. Now, I want you to 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


245 


do this, to show me when and where, and by whom, this 
usurpation of episcopal authority of which you spoke came 
in. I give you a dilemma you may take at your leisure. 
Either the churches were all from the first episcopal, or 
since, as we know, and nobody ever did or could deny it, 
were all such at the beginning of the third century. All 
other systems had proved such manifest failures as to be 
abandoned by the universal consent of Christendom.” 

Gardiner paused, and looked Maurice full in the face. 
The young man found himself in the grasp of a logic too 
strong for him. “But,” he said at last, “does not this send 
me to that very Komanism from which you kept me? Why 
cannot the Catholic retort all you have said upon you?” 
“Because I can do what I have challenged you to do — put 
my finger upon every one of his corruptions. I show where, 
when and how the Western Church ceased to be Catholic, 
and became papal. Is it transubstantiation, celibacy of 
the clergy, worsliip of relics and images, appeals to Rome, 
Virgin-worship? Anything we protest against, we do so, 
knowing when it was not the faith of the Church, knowing, 
in most cases, when it crept in.” “But how about your 
apostolic succession? what proof have we that it still exists, 
when there are a thousand probabilities that it has been 
broken?” 

“ My young friend, have you ever examined that valu- 
able problem which so bewilders the unenlightened intel- 
lect — the one which arguing from the fact that every one 
must have tw’o parents, and each of these two parents, con- 
clusively shows that each man has infinite millions of 
ancestors? What is the answer? Why, that the lines 
cross. Instead of there being one broadening track of suc- 
cession, there are multitudinous ones. You can’t miss your 
road back, because all lead to it. Yours is the Presby- 
terian theory, which admits breaks, and to which these 
w’ould be fatal. There may be constant failures of off- 
spring in families, but races and nations continue. The 
principle of Episcopal Consecration is its own safeguard. 
Each bishop receives the succession through several others. 
That is one object of the Episcopate. Suppose, for instance, 
I have been validly consecrated a bishop, and ordain twenty 
or an hundred Presbyters and deacons. Some of these 
may be improperly ordained, and one such gets to be a 


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bishop. Can he vitiate the succession? No: his brother 
bishops possess and transmit the power. The worst he 
can do will be to vitiate the orders he himself confers on 
the lower clergy, who die out, and leave the succession 
pure. AV"e have also, as you will see when you are ordained 
a priest, the added guaranty of presbyterial laying-on of 
hands. The fact is, the apostolic succession in our Church 
has been but twice imperilled ; and those times we know 
about, they having been thoroughly ventilated by contro- 
versy. One was the consecration of Archbishop Parker, 
after the death of Queen Mary ; and the other, that of the 
American bishops. In each case, we have the fullest ad- 
mission of our bitterest opponents, that the succession, 
though brought to a single link, was not broken. Now, take 
this illustration. You stand at the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi ; you see the broad river emptying into the Gulf. 
You take up a drop from it. It is said to you, ‘How im- 
possible to prove that this single drop can have had com- 
munication with the source ! There are tw'o thousand miles 
from the source of the Missouri, in the Rocky Mountains : 
you cannot see whence it comes.’ You simply answer, ‘It 
is here.’ Its presence is the best of proofs. If there was 
a break anywhere, it could not have got to us. Remember 
it is not apostolic virtues, but the apostolic office, that we 
claim. Good bishops or bad bishops make no difference. 
Lord Macaulay, whom you have been reading, has misled 
you by confusing the point. Now, if we should say, ‘There 
are spots along the river where it could have been cut off,’ 
all you have to do is to go to them, and see why its flow was 
not interrupted, how the mountain chain was cloven for its 
passage. So it is with the succession. The Church knows it, 
because she has it. There are the Methodists who profess the 
episcopal form ; we point to their break, ‘ ex nihilo, nihil Jit* 
They deny the value of succession, or claim it upon Pres- 
byterian grounds, because John Wesley could not confer 
what he had not himself. However, if you want the 
records, you can have them in the Archbishops of Canter- 
bury to the very days of Augustine. Remember, that 
from the original apostles went forth twelve streams ot 
descent — thirteen if you count St. Paul in, for Matthias 
took the place of Judas — which must have multiplied and 
recrossed infinitely in the course of the first ccnturie'?; even 


BrwYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


247 


BO, that in eveiy living bishop to-day who has been validly 
consecrated is the succession of all the apostles.” 

Maurice had fired his last shot, and made his last stand. 
He sat silent and thoughtful, yet not displeased. It was 
before him, the crisis of his fate. “ What shall I do ?” was 
his thought; anything but yielding — and yet and yet it 
was right to yield, only how should he save his dignity ? 
“ Give me a week,” he said, “ to decide this.” “ Why 
should I give you anything ?” replied Gardiner. “ I have 
no right to give you or refuse you. You own that you have 
failed to satisfy yourself. You have asked for a better 
way : are you satisfied, or are you not ? I cannot tell how 
we stand, and therefore dare not advise. If you have been 
debating with me to gain a support against your own 
doubts, I have no right to give you counsel : if you are 
coming to me as a friend, I know what I should say. It is 
not time yet for me to say that.” 

“One thing more, at least, let me ask. You do not re- 
gard me as a minister, I see. I do not quarrel with that; 
but, tell me, am I not so far a minister to myself, that I 
ought not to relinquish that calling?” Gardiner was upon 
the point of saying no, for he misapprehended the drift of 
Maurice’s question; and, had he done so, all would have 
gone wrong. But something in the young man’s tone, 
something of subdued feeling, caught his ear and he hesi- 
tated. With that subtle rapidity of perception which he 
possessed beyond most men, he seemed to enter into the 
other’s thought. “If you mean,” he said, “that, having 
proposed that work of serving Christ as his minister, you 
have put your hand to the plough, and ought not to look 
back, you are right. God forbid that I should hinder you. 
Only let me, if you are satisfied that I see you are holding 
it with an unauthorized hand, and ignorantly, take it from 
you, and put it rightly into your grasp.” Maurice’s face 
flushed with joy. “Then your church will not reject me 
from its ministry ?” “ I know no reason, if you believe her 

faith, accept her orders, and can answer her tests, why you 
should be refused. You must give up your place here, of 
course. If you will go to Broadwater, and study at the 
Cranmer School for six months, you can, under the canon, 
be entitled, upon proper recommendations, to become a dea- 
con, and then a priest. I will give you a letter to my 


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friend, the Bishop of , who is now there in the 

absence of the diocesan. He will at once baptize and con- 
firm you, if you need baptism. I should advise that in any 
case; for hypothetical baptism would settle all doubts con- 
cerning the validity of your Unitarian baptism.” “I have 
never had even that. I remember asking about it of my 
parents. My father was not a church-member, and my 
mother said she wished it; but our minister told her to 
wait, and let me choose for myself when I grew up.” 

“ Very well, then; give me paper and a pen — thank you, 
a quill, if you have it, for I hate these steel abominations,” 
said Gardiner, in his cheery tones, relieved from the graver 
accents in which the discussion had been held — “and I will 
write the letter; and then, if your friend does not come by 
the train which I hear whistling, you must come with me 

to Mr. ’s, where I am staying, and I will give you a 

copy of the canons you will need to consult, and also a 
little book I wish you to look at, which will meet your 
case.” He drew up to the table and began to write. Mau- 
rice waited, and thought in silence. He was ready to draw 
back. This friend was a young lawyer from the city, who 
had urged Maurice to throw up his profession and go to the 
West with him, where he had secured a good opening. 
Maurice had thought of it. He was now committed, yet 
longed to escape from the net. If his friend did not come, 
he would hold the matter decided for him. So he listened, 
and, while Gardiner’s pen raced rapidly on, heard the train 
arrive and departed, and, soon after, steps come and go, 
and carriages drive by outside; and still no one came to his 
door. He got up at last, as Gardiner sealed the letter and 
gave it him, and walked to the window with a long sigh of 
relief. Then a great anxiety seized him, and he almost 
hurried Gardiner away, lest the expected one might still 
arrive, after all; and, as they walked down the street, he 
shrank nervously into the shadows at each passer-by from 
the direction of the station. This may seem childish and 
foolish in him; but any one who has ever felt the pressure 
of a great decision upon him knows how stranded and weak 
and helpless the effort may leave him. When they reached 
Gardiner’s stopping-place, they found Maud He Forrest 
alone in the parlor. She laid down her book; Gardiner 
went directly up stairs to his room, leaving Maurice. She 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 

looked up inquiringly, then came forward, and put both 
hands in his. “I see how it is; I know it,” she said: “oh, 
how good God is to me!” and then she sat down on the 
sofa, and covered her face with her hands to hide her tears. 
Then she left the room hastily, and did not return. When 
Gardiner re-appeared, he had in his hand a little packet, in 
addition to the things he had premised. “My niece wished 
me to give you this. Open it when you get to Broadwater. I 
suppose you cannot get away this week, but you had better 
preach your last sermon and resign, and leave next Monday 
morning. You must excuse Maud to-night; and, if you 
permit me to say it, excuse me also, for 1 leave in the early 
train, and am very tired.” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


T he next morning’s post brought Maurice two letters. 

He opened the first, which had a foreign post-mark, 
without looking at the other. The letter was from Salton- 
stall Wise, and ran thus : — 

“My Deaii Old Fellow: — So you have really kept true to your 
eju ly purjjose, and are preaching in the ^vikls of Wooden-nutniegdom. 
So have not I. I think you must have heard an absurd story of my 
seeking to rest upon the infallible bosom of the one true Church. You 
write as if you hjul. I had half a mind to resist it. My grandfather, 
as you know, came home, one evening in the da^-^s of his youth, and 
turned half a tea-caddy full of prime Souchong out of his silver-buckled 
shoes, which (the tea, not the shoes), in spite of the piteous wailings of 
his mother and maiden aunts, he put into the fire, and then went to 
wash tlie war-paint off his face. Ilis grandfather assisted at the sack- 
ing of a l’oi)isli mass-house at Fcmaquid, or some such place, and with 
his OA\ni pious hands did smash an ivory crucifix four feet high. His 
father, old Colonel Wise, was present on duty at the occasion when the 
head of one William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbuiy, was stricken olf. 
Could a man with such antecedents go liomewai’ds? Nevertheless, 
there is an ugly fact of truth in the rumor; and yet it is not true. I 
did make profession, and was baptized by a priest. O, I wish 1 could 
tell you what was then held out to me — Ausions of political advancement, 
which were no delusions either, but based on most sure statistics. I 
don’t think I liked that. As a little boy, I always objected to take the 
lump of sugar immediately after the medicine. It was mixing things 
not meant for each other. It spoiled the sugar, and did not take away 
the bad taste. It was a hard swallow, to put the whole thing doAvn, 
Holy Father at the Vatican and all; but I had done it, preferring any 
thing to the utterly horrible feeling of having no belief, no religion, no 
Church, at all. So I could not stand the discovery, that, after all my 
pains, I had only been promoting my interest in the kingdom of this 
world, especially when the latter’s paths were so very miry. You ask 
me — I can see you looking at me with all your eyes — ‘ What am I now ?’ 
I am just nothing. Tliis I feel sure of — that I cannot well go back ; 
and yet, if I chafed before, I feel like raving now. Do you remember 
Browning’s glorious myth which begins — 

‘Over the sea our galleys went?’ 

250 


Br.YAX MAUBICE OR THE SEEKER, 


251 


It i! 5 »in ‘Paracelsus.’ Get it, and read it, and j’ou uill know how I feel. 
But tliis is not why I -write: it is to advise you, while there is time. 
You ^^ill have to make your choice. You are not satisfied -with Unita- 
rianism : none of us, who are good for aught, are. You will tire of 
your own experimenting, and then you must go somew-here. Don’t go 
to Rome : w^hatever else you do, not that. I used to think our people 
were very foolish in their fears ; that, if one could believe that religion, 
it miglit do as well as another. I know' better now. It is just possible 
you may bring up in the Episcopal Church. If you can find rest there, 
go to it. I don’t say that you can ; but, if you can, don’t let pride or 
prejudice keep you out. You will have two things to contend against — 
3 'ou mil really lose position and profit, and j'our people will make you 
think, if they can, they are led by interested motives. There are not 
thirty mitres in the whole Church, I think ; and fifteen of these are not 
desirable head-gear. They drop in on an average of one in three years, 
and there are two thousand clergy eligible to the vacancies. Neverthe- 
less, if you go over, the first thing our folks (I call them so from old 
habit) will tell you is, that you are hoping to be made a bishop. The 
only thing that draAvs me at all toward these Church-people, as they 
call themselves, is that their clergy Avork, and work hard, and that in 
the least conspicuous and pacing w'ays. 

“ For myself, I am going to retire from diplomacy ; the more so 
because my worthy chef Avill go out with the present administration, 
and I have no fancj' to stay here, ad interim, and cover the blunders of 
the new incmnbent. I am going to travel aAvhile ; and then, Maurice, 
dear old boy, when I come home I sliall try to be w'hatever you are. I 
have put my faith utterly in you. If you are settled, I Avill be taught 
and guided. It is awful earnest with me, so be very cai'eful what you 
do and decide.” 

The remainder of the letter does not concern us. So we 
pass to the other one. 

It was double-weight, postmarked Boston, and, when 
opened, the enclosed dropped out, and temptingly seemed 
to unfold itself before Maurice’s eyes. It was a call : — 

“ Deae Sir : — The First Unitarian Society of Mount Chestnut re- 
spectfully in-vite you to become their pastor. Tlie salary Avill be $2,000 
a year, and can be increased if your circumstances require. We hope 
for an eaiiy and favorable answ'er. 



Very trul}' yom-s. 


This was within a letter of Dr. Hooper’s well-known 
hiind : — 


“My Dear Boy : — I congratulate \'Ou. I hnA'e just engineered this 
nobly, and uoav here is the success. J ust as a'ou left the Divinity School, 


252 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


old Hamilton, who had prosed in Mount Chestnut forty years, was 
gathered to his fathers. They have been looking about ever since. A 
committee heard you in Norowam last Sunday, were greatly delighted, 
and sent me this to enclose to you this morning. Don’t let any foolish- 
ness about leaving a useful field of labor make you hesitate. You can 
have, just such service and music as you please: the more , the better, so 
it is only good and striking. 

“ I headed otf the only other candidate likely to give you trouble, and 
now you are made for life ; can marry when you will. You’ve a plea- 
sant town, within say tliirty miles of me — an hour or so by rail — and 
the best parish we have out of the city. 

“ If you ask me to preach your ordination sermon, I must not refuse — ■ 
though I always do decline such things. 

“ Yours in haste, Turinell Hooper.” 

Maurice sat down, and answered the doctor’s letter imme- 
diately. He did not feel safe with it in his hands, so much 
did he dread his OAvn weakness. He was not tempted by 
its prospects. Nor did he ever think of accepting the call. 
That which he dreaded was the reopening in his own mind 
of the old debate, whether he ought not to give the thing a 
fuller trial. He was in a state of morbid conscientiousness, 
for which action was the only relief. So he wrote : — 

“ Dear Doctor : — I cannot take Mount Chestnut or any other Uni- 
tarian charge. I am just resigning my post here, and am about to 
commence my fai'ewell sermon. I am going into the Episcopal Church. 
I shall not, there or elsewhere, forget, however, your kind interest in 
me, or cease to be grateful. 

“ Yours, Bryan.” 

The ice once broken, it was without trepidation that he 
opened, a day or two after, the doctor’s reply, which ran 
thus: — • 

“ My Dear Boy : — I am shocked and pained beyond measure that, 
with your bright hopes and uncommon abilities, you should leave us for 
that Church wliich, of all others, least recognizes the personal powers 
of it's ministers. I suppose you have been allured by the idea of 
advancement — that you may be a bishop. They won’t make you onetf 
such things are not for converts who are too shaky. There is no body 
wherein there is so much jealousy of outsiders as "the Episcopal Church. 
It is no place for a man of talent. It dwarfs and warps a man’s intel- 
lect, all that strict law which it observes. After two generations of it, 
men really seem to run out. All the prominent posts in it, nearly, 
seem to be filled by men who have come into it from other denomina- 
tions. [‘ I should like tc reconcile your two propositions. Dr. Hooper,’ 
said Maurice to himself]. Don’t gf into this thing. People will sa}' at 


BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


253 


once that you are run out, and fit for nothing better. You "vsill be lost, 
SAA'allowed up, in that Church. Tliey bury a man in a country par- 
sonage, and leave him to starve. Tlie Methodists push all their rising 
men, the Baptists stick like Highland clansmen one to another, but the 
Episcopalians Avill let you work all your life, and then think you paid 
by a D. D. from any twopenny college. By the way, you’ll never get 
the degree from Harvard now. Of course, they have flattered you, and 
will do it. They have so few men of note, that real talent like yours 
wll be a very great treasure. It is so ridiculous in you to cut yourself 
otf from all your old friends. Besides, e?ii7'e nous, you ought not to 
leave us now, if you do by and by. There is a current — a sort of tem- 
poraiy fancy, perhaps — among us setting that way ; and, if we were to 
come in as a body, you know, bringing the wealth and intellect of New 
England with us, we might make terms, such as we never shall get if 
we go singly. If I were at liberty to tell you of all the brethren who 
have thought of this thing, you might be startled. But we shall hold 
on, though some of the young men are shaky. But do be resolute; take 
this call. I’ve not sent in your letter. In a couple of years, you may 
be very glad. 

“ Your true friend, T. Hooper. 

“ P. S. If you are in communication — as I suppose you must be— 
with any of their bishops, I wish you Avould learn this for me. I am 
under the impression that they recognize the Roman-Catholic orders. 
Why could you not be made a priest abroad, and then come to the Epis- 
copal Church? Tliey w^ould think tAvice as much of you. It is the 
w ay I should do, except for ]\frs. Hooper.” 

“ Bravo, Doctor ! you have thought enough about it, it 
seems, to have found Mrs. H. an obstacle,” said Maurice to 
himself, as he laid down this second letter. Then he wrote 
a brief reply: — 

“ My Dear Doctor : — ify mind is made up. If are thinking 
of the same thing — and I must say your letter reads so — all I can say 
is, go at once, and by the straight road.” 


It is easier to advise than to act. Maurice did not go 
the straight or the short road ; but out of Unitarianism and 
its ministry he w^as determined to go. He sat dowm and 
wrote his farewell sermon. At the close of the morning 
service, on the following Sunday, he briefly stated his resig- 
nation, and that his farewell sermon would be in the even- 
ing. His little chapel was crammed, even to aisles and 
doorways. He felt under a strange excitement. He had 
tried to put the case calmly and dispassionately, but the 
effort to do so forced him into plainer talk than he had 

22 


2b4 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


ever before used. It was in marked contrast to the showy 
and vague style he had been drifting into. There was 
breathless silence as he told his flock that he was satisfied 
that no Divine commission could be given him by congre- 
gational forms or from their own body ; that their faith was 
wanting in essential elements, and was a compromise of 
dexterous concealments ; and that the liberty of believing 
as, one pleased was a delusion and a snare. 

He took his text from the book of Judges, from the story 
of Micah and his idols. He drew a spirited picture of the 
lawless Israel when there was no king, and every man did 
that which was right in his own eyes ; and he then applied 
this, with a severity of which he hardly himself felt the 
force, to those theories of a “ Church of the future” which 
he had once indulged in. 

His people went out of the church cowed and stunned. 
In after days they woke up to a hurt and angry feeling. 
Some drifted away into other bodies ; but the original Uni- 
versalist element, which had been kept down by his Har- 
vard Unitarianism, revived, and they called an out-and-out 
Universalist, and the society droned on under a half-educated 
man, who ran no risk of being borne away by what the 
womankind of the parish considered the main cause of 
Maurice’s perversion — the Episcopalian parties in the great 
houses of Norowam. Let us leave them in peace : our story 
concerns them no more. 

Maurice did not care to linger in Norowam. He could 
not determine to go to Broadwater yet : he felt the inaction 
and lassitude which follows intense strain of mind and 
purpose. So he packed up his things, and started for a brief 
summer ramble. He found himself landed at nightfall at 
the Massasoit in Springfield, from which place he intended 
to go to Northampton the next day, and then loiter up the 
Connecticut Valley to the White Mountains. He found 
the hotel crowded. The halls and parlors were swarming 
with young men. There was a familiar look and tone to 
them which struck his attention while he was waiting at 
the clerk’s desk. It was some time before that functionary 
could attend to him ; but, when he did, it was not very 
satisfactory. His words were brief, as of a man in the 
midst of great events. “ Sorry, sir ; but, unless you wrote a 
week ago, you’ve no chance; everything is taken. We 


BRYAJS MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


255 


turned off fifty to-night !” “ What’s the matter?” was ]\Iau- 
rice’s reply. “ Crowninshield, Endicott; seventy -three. 
Yes, all right. John, take those gentlemen’s things to 
seventy-three,” said the clerk. Then to Maurice again, 
your pardon, sir; but the college regatta to-morrow 
on the river. Yale stops at the United States; Harvard 
stops here; all full. If you are Harvard, you may find 
some friend who can give you a room ; I can do nothing for 
you. If you’re Yale, you had better go down to the other 
house.” Just then, Maurice felt his hand seized, and vio- 
lently shaken. “Bryan, old boy ! you here ! that’s glorious! 
AVe’ll take care of you, if you can stand a shake-down on 
the floor. Our class has No. 17. You won’t get much 
sleep. We’re rather old birds to be here; but then, for the 
sake of the boating interest, some of us always turn out to 
the regattas, and this is a special affair. Come in and get 
your supper. Five of the fellows came in the Boston train 
— Sears, Howe, Morton, Keyes, and Pepper Osgood : that, 
with you, and me, and Fred Tilton, will make eight of us. 
Here, waiter, show us the dining-room.” So rattled on an 
old classmate, and Maurice found himself borne off into the 
large dining-room, usually, at that hour, here and there 
dotted with silent travellers, enacting the solemn rites of 
the evening sacrifice to nightmare and dyspepsia, but 
which now buzzed with noise and laughter. He was greeted 
warmly by his old classmates, now, like himself, entered 
upon manhood, but rejoicing in this brief return to the frolic 
and boyishness of university days. The talk was mainly 
upon the one absorbing topic. “ Where is our crew ? any 
of them here ?” asked one. “ Oh, no ! they are snug in bed, 
and two of the Sophs on guard that nobody disturbs them, 
or smuggles in a cigar or a drink. They have been in 
training — let me see, since the May exhibition — and you 
can just fancy how, at the last moment, they must long to 
break over. AVon’t they go it, by this time to-morrow 
night!” 

Opposite Maurice’s party at the table were a number of 
the undergraduates, whose talk was livelier than even that of 
their elders. “I say, Ned, I’ve just come up from the States. 
I went to get a squint at their crew, and fell in with some 
of the Yale men. I booked a couple of bets ; I’ve got five 
to three from them, so they are bound to crow to the last. 


256 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


I was ready to go even, but they would give me no chance 
Think they are trying to bluff?” “ No, no, not between 
colleges. What’s the use? a man bets for his college all he 
can spare, and takes the risk ; it isn’t the money. How are 
their boats? I hear they have gone to the best New York 
builders. Hang boats ; it’s the men that do it. We always 
have won, and we mean to to-morrow.” “ Shells, I suppose?” 
“ I should think so. Why, they are as thin as a paper nau- 
tilus, and the men have to use hooks and eyes instead of 
buttons ; a button off would spoil the time.” The speaker 
emphasized this remark by the pop of a champagne cork, 
echoed back from various parts of the room ; and even the 
waiters were drawn into the excitement, and, being seized 
by strong and active hands, submitted to be decorated with 
the red rosette of Harvard. Maurice’s party speedily with- 
drew to their own room, preferring to keep their reunion 
more quietly. Sleep was out of the question till long after 
midnight. From the dining-room came up the notes of 
many a song, and the cheers and laughter; and, older and 
graver though they were, these elder graduates had much 
lively talk to get through. However, they went at last to 
their cots. 

Fair and clear rose the morning. The race was to come 
off at six in the afternoon. Maurice found no time to be 
alone, nor did he wish it. It w^as a great relief to him to 
plunge into the midst of the gay talk and jolly liveliness 
of the young men around him. There is, moreover, about 
Harvard a wonderful continuity of descent. You meet a 
class five years younger than your own, and the brothers 
of your classmates are on its roll. Twenty years, and the 
sons of the dear old fellows are beginning to come up to 
the Freshman examination. Thirty years, and you are 
sitting on the platform, very choky about the throat, and 
moist as to the spectacles, as a young gentleman of your 
own name answers to the “ expectatur dissertatio” of the 
president. So that whenever Harvard men meet, in spite 
of disparity of years, they are sure to find common ground 
somewhere. Maurice was introduced to the two crews, and 
could not but admire the noble young fellows, with their 
frank, open faces, and joyous, larking ways and talk. 
There was a most healthy realism in it all. One or two of 
the old professors appeared in the course of the day — en 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER, 


257 


route for somewhere else, they said, — who shyly drew up to 
the groups, talking shop-talk, as is the wont of professors 
when stranded upon the shoals of undergraduate life, but 
showing, in a quiet way, scarcely less interest. The sultry 
afternoon wore on, and at length a fresh breeze swept down 
from the region where Holyoke faces Tom, cooling the air 
and crisping the broad river-reach. By half-past five, the 
banks were crowded ; all Springfield seemingly turning out 
to enjoy the spectacle. The Harvard boats, sent down by 
rail, were carefully placed in the water. The crews took 
their seats with grim earnestness, and then, Avith beautiful 
precision, the result of long practice, pulled slowly but 
steadily down to the starting-place. The Yale boat, and 
another from one of the minor colleges, were getting under 
way from the opposite bank. There was much criticism 
passed upon them, in low tones, by the Harvard men. 
There was more of flourish, and loud-voiced command : a 
simple sign or a quiet word had been all the Cambridge 
captains permitted themselves to use. Yale showed some- 
thing of flurry, which boded ill. As the headmost boat 
shot out into the stream, a voice from the bank called out 
loud and clear, “ Now Yale !” and a ringing cheer went up 
from the eager hundreds of young men. Their coxswain 
called out hoarsely, “ Way enough! toss! and the cheer 
was acknowledged by a returning salute. ‘^That gives us 
the race, boys!” cried a quick-sighted Harvard man at 
Maurice’s side. “ That fellow knows no beder than to tire 
his crew by a useless flourish at the start. It will take him 
half-way to the ground to get them into good stroke again, 
and every minute of breathing-time there is precious. 
Yale pulls too quick : wait till we settle to our long stroke, 
and you’ll see.” There was a period of restless, breathless 
suspense. Far below could be seen the flash of Harvard’s 
oars ; and then the boats rounded to, and lay motionless, 
black points in the river, slightly nearer the eastern shore. 
Then Yale and the fourth boat reached the spot. Minutes 
seemed hours as they got into line. All eyes were gazing 
down the stream. Then came a flash and puff of Avhite 
smoke, from the bank beloAV, and then the moments of 
growing, culminating fever of attention. Presently went 
up from the further bank the cry of “Yale! Yale!” first 
tVoin solitary voices high up upon the roofs of houses, 


258 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


whence the keen-eyed watchers, from their perilous perches, 
could see the position of the boats, then caught up by the 
crowd beneath, and then dying away in the breathless 
doubt of the struggle. “Wait till our stroke tells!’’ mut- 
tered the men around Maurice; and then suddenly was 
heard from below a solitary shout of “Har-vard!” and 
Maurice fancied he could see a gap between the boats. One 
was certainly tailing the rest, which one he could not tell. 
’Most every hand now held a watch, and eager eyes were 
glancing frbm the dial-plates to the gleaming river. And 
now they could see the rise and fall of the bending backs, 
and the swift roll of the oars flashing and feathering in 
one sweep. “ Hurrah for the long stroke I” cried a looker- 
on, and then the murmur swelled into a cheer and shouting 
up toward the goal, amid the cries of “ Well done, Y. Y.l” 
“Harvard! Harvard!” The university boat led right 
gallantly the way. “Give way, Y. Y.! fifty for ever!” 
was the cry of many voices, as more practiced eyes than 
Bryan’s saw that pressing the champion boat hard came 
the brave little four-oars. The Yale boat seemed to lap on 
the quarter of the Y. Y. ; but, as the leading boat came 
abreast, all could see a mighty gap, not to be closed : and 
then, amid such cheering as drowned every other sound, 
the Harvard crews rested on their oars beyond the goal. 
Yale pulled gallantly to the last, but hopelessly, while 
the fourth boat, abandoning the utterly vain attempt, 
was steered into the shore; and the Harvard bowman 
unfurled and placed in the bow the little champion-flag 
of crimson silk for which so much endurance and courage 
had contended. The landing was a tumult of triumphant 
delight. The strong young fellows, dripping with perspira- 
tion, were hustled into their overcoats, and not permitted to 
set foot upon the ground, but were hoisted upon the linked 
arms of their comrades, and borne in triumph to their 
hotel. It was a Babel of voices ; every one was telling of 
the time, the incidents, of the race: while Yale more 
quietly gathered in a dense crowd upon the other side of 
the river; not forgetting to raise a hearty cheer of con- 
gratulation to the rival and victor college, which was man- 
fully responded to, in all the generous enthusiasm of success, 
by the young men of Harvard. 

Maurice turned quietly away from the river’s margin^ 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


259 


Now, that the furor of the race was over, his thoughts came 
back to himself. He felt that he was no longer young, 
that life was other than a summer holiday for him, and he 
strolled away to the hill which the Arsenal crowns, in a 
deep reverie. A strange sympathy came over him for the 
losing side. He too, he thought, as he sat upon the hill-top 
and watched the gorgeous melting of the sunset clouds — he 
too had pulled in his race, and lost. He slowly started 
homewards past the United States Hotel. Little groups 
of long-haired Yale students were standing on the side- 
walk, and they looked at him as he passed, jealously watch- 
ing for some glance of triumph which might be resented. 
Whether they saw no such signs, as he slowly loitered by, 
or were restrained by the natural instinct of gentlemanli- 
ness, he could not tell, but they went on with their talk as 
before. 

“Well, boys,” said one, “we’re beaten this time; but, if 
training will do it, we’ll have that champion-flag in New 
Haven harbor yet.” “ Yes,” said another, “ that’s so : it is 
poor pluck that gives up at one beat.” The words sank 
deep into Maurice’s mind. He remembered that he had a 
classmate living in Springfield, and went into a shop to 
learn of his abode. That was soon found ; and, at the very 
gate of the pretty little house, he met his friend. Maurice 
was warmly greeted, taken into the house and presented to 
his friend’s wife, a bright, lovely little woman, who wore con- 
spicuously the Harvard colors. They kept him to tea; and, 
over that social meal, the chat flowed freely. “You are a 
Unitarian minister somewhere in Connecticut, they told me. I 
thought you would have gone into the law,” said his friend. 
“I was that,” replied Maurice. He had changed his cleri- 
cal-cut coat he wore in Norowam, for a light summer-sack, 
and had put on a blue neck-tie, so the question was hesita- 
tingly asked, and a look of surprise came over the wife’s 
face. “I was that; but I have left the Unitarians.” “I 
wonder if you had as good a reason as I had,” said his host, 
glancing across the table to his wife, who smiled, and 
blushed a little, and then said, “Will has a better reason 
than me, I hope, though I did take him with me to church.” 
“Well, I am satisfied now, any way; but how was it with 
you, if I may ask?” “I am afraid I have had no such 
good reason,” said Maurice; “at least [with a bow to the 


260 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


lady] not so fair a temptation. I have left Unitarianism 
because I have tried it, and found it wanting. And now I 
am adrift. I have thouglit — I wish I could make up my 
mind— that I should go to Broadwater to study for the 
Episcopal Church.” “O Mr. Maurice, do! I am sure you 
ought. I know you will never feel contented till you do.” 
“But, deary, perhaps Mr. Maurice does not feel ready to 
take such a responsibility.” “Why not? he A-as taken it 
already. It is his work: he must not give it up; it is set- 
tled for him. The only thing is in what way to do it — the 
right way or the wrong.” “You see, Maurice, my wife 
(woman-like) cannot think any way but her own the right.” 
“Well, now, isn’t it?” said she. Maurice smiled; but twice 
that day a casual word had hit him hard. He went back 
to the Massasoit at ten. The noise and fun was at its 
height, a grand supper was in progress, and from the dining- 
hall came the roar of sturdy choruses, and then a rich 
voice trolling out a solo, followed with cheers, and the jin- 
gle of glass, and shouts of laughter. There are black sheep 
in every flock, and weakness of the flesh, and foolish young 
fellows who will be led into excess. As Maurice passed 
through the hall, he met a party of undergraduates. They 
were helping one of their number up to bed. The fair 
young face was all flushed and stupid with drink, and the 
athletic, manly limbs all relaxed. Maurice saw it with a 
pained feeling. He knew that such things would be, and 
that one outbreak did not necessarily mean the ruin of the 
boy, who would probably wake well shamed on the morrow; 
but he was saddened by the sight. He felt that which, the 
first time we do feel it, comes with a very chilling sense — 
the power of worldliness; not w^hat is usually meant by 
worldliness in sermons and essays, but the real spell of the 
world. Here was all this gay life around him — this hearty, 
happy animation, with all its redeeming traits, too, of chiv- 
alric pluck and gentlemanliness and honor, and even its 
excesse.s, which were not deep-seated evils, and what was it 
worth? 

He sat thinking it over in his room. He was not disposed 
to take the Puritan view at all. He did not believe renun- 
ciation of the world meant giving up anything intended for 
our use and enjoyment. He admitted this boat-race, even 
with its fringe of dissipation as good and healthy in its way. 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


261 


But he felt the contrast of the life he had half-purposed to 
himself to return to, with such a life as Winthrop was lead- 
ing. It was not in itself bad, but it needed that it should 
be infused with the strong leaven of a downright, uncompro- 
mising Christian principle. He now saw clearly, for the 
first time, the worth and the value of the ministerial office. 
It was to be a work in the world ; not a Sunday work, but 
among men. There flashed upon his soul the opposing sides 
of the day’s experience — its tendencies downwards, its coarse, 
degrading possibilities ; its ennobling, hopeful, purifying 
opportunities. He felt the want of his own influence in the 
scale of right. All this culture, all this training of body 
and mind, was a great fallow field. The end of life was 
not running boat-races or enjoying triumphs. He saw his 
life-work before him, and he knew that the old seaman’s 
words to him w'ere true — he had been saved from the wild 
waves of the Newfoundland Banks to do God service in his 
church. Had he found that church? It seemed to him 
that he had done so. No one could deal with these young 
men unless possessed of an admitted authority. He had 
seen in Winthrop the ministry of a church which acted with 
power. He had felt the difference in the bearing of young 
men toward him and toward his friend. He saw the cause 
of his own failures. • He determined to take the morning 
train for Broadwater. 


CHAPTER XIX. 


T he morning after the boat-race, a classmate, whom 
Maurice met at the breakfast-table brought him news 
of some changes in his probable position in life. He had 
inherited a comfortable estate, and had never been required 
to give any other care to it than simply to receive and spend 
his dividends. He now learnt that, through the fraud of 
its president, the manufacturing company in which a large 
part of his property was invested was on the brink of failure. 
It was feared that, by a series of adroit forgeries, the stock- 
holders were to be made individually liable. He had to 
hurry to Boston. For two months’ time his life was wholly 
changed. He was compelled to pass his days in dusty and 
hot offices, in consultation with lawyers. At one time, he 
was in hourly expectation of having to begin the w^orld anew, 
with nothing but the clothes in his trunk, his own head and 
heart. 

“ If the worst come to the worst,” said his lawyer to him 
one of these dark days, “ I will take you into my office and 
give you the best chance I can ; but the ministry will be 
out of the question.” Maurice never knew how much this 
was to him, till it seemed out of his reach. He mentally 
resolved to seek a clerkship, and to earn his daily bread 
while studying for the six months required. At length, 
however, light broke. Through his own shrewd mastery of 
the details of a very dark transaction, he was enabled to 
trace the disposition of the embezzled property. The com- 
pany came out of the trial sorely crippled, without hope of 
making a dividend under two or three years. He was 
offered a place in its employ at a very tempting salary. One 
great gain he had made; he had conquered his dreamy, 
balancing temper to a great extent, had gained an insight 
into the practical business life of the world. He had learned 


BUYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


263 


economy too; to live simply, and to deny himself. He asked 
and obtained leave, at the final meeting of the directors, when 
the winding-up of the affair was reached, to consider for one 
week their proposal, and then, once more, he took up the 
line of life which for two months he had dropped. 

“ We shall have you back with us soon,” said one of his 
friends. “ You have too good a brain to be buried in the 
pettinesses of a country parsonage.” 

Bryan felt the force of this; he had a just pride in his 
own success; he had felt, too, the charm of business enterprise, 
but not yet its weariness. But he had also, in another’s fall, 
seen the awful temptation which besets the American busi- 
ness life. He had looked into the vortex of that dreadful 
maelstrom, “stock speculation;” he had seen the shipwrecks 
and ghastly drowned faces looking up from that wild whirl. 
He knew in his soul that he that maketh haste to be rich 
maketh to himself sin. Strong as was the allurement of 
material activities, a stronger spell lay upon him in the un- 
opened letter which day by day he had carried in his bosom, 
and in the hopes sown by that fair river, amid the western 
hills of New-England. So, asking for his week, he rose up 
and went his way in feverish impatience, and yet checked by 
the clinging pressure of the past. 

The summer had ended when Maurice trod again the 
streets of Broadwater. The beautiful old town seemed, as it 
always seems, unchanged from its sleepy quietude. It was 
night when he arrived, however, and this must pass for an 
after recognition. He only knew then that he went straight 
to the hotel, and, tired with travel, made no attempt to visit 
the Divinity School that night. He had taken with him 
sundry papers, which yet required to be gone over, and 
which he had calculated he could attend to before bed-time. 
But he was too sleepy, and, after nodding over them for half 
an hour, he gave it up and went to bed. The consequence was, 
that he did not stir out the next morning, but was putting 
the last paper into his valise as the gong of the Decatur 
House rung for dinner. 

That over, he sallied forth. At the hotel-door the attack 
of irresolution came back upon him once more, fiercer than 
ever. He strolled up to the hills above Broadwater. He 
found himself at the gate of a cemetery. He went in along 
the winding path that led to the monument, idly taking 


264 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


notice of all things in the effort to stay the tumult of his 
thoughts. The moment for decision had come, and yet he 
was wanting to it. The fact that he felt a doubt seemed to 
press heavily against him. What business had he to be 
hesitating? He sat weariedly down upon the summit, and 
looked around over the lovely landscape, in the first russet 
changes of its autumnal beauty. Beneath lay Broadwater, 
buried in its elms. Westward, like the ridgy back of a long 
wave, rising with the shoreward “ sene” of the ground-swell, 
just ere it curls and breaks, against the horizon, he could 
trace the crest of the Hoveden Hills. To the eastward 
shone the silver reaches of the wdifding river. Far to the 
north, a dim blue cloud against the sky-line marked a well- 
known mountain in a neighboring State. He looked down 
into a mass of groves, and the four chimneys of a stately 
mansion-house peeped out — one of the old family seats of 
the aristocratic heart of the State. He noted all, lingering 
on each point with leisurely distinctness, as one trying to 
escape the pressure of importunate thought ; but his eye 
would come back slowly yet inevitably to the square obser- 
vatory of the Cranmer School building. 

He had come expressly to Broadwater to find rest for his 
irresolution, and now he was minded to flee from the haven 
where he would be. He caught sight of the smoke of a 
steamer upon the river. It was the boat for New York. 
He half rose from his seat upon the grass, in the impulse to 
go down to the landing, and take passage in her for the city. 
He put his hand in his pocket, to see if he had his wallet 
with him, and his grasp met Gardiner’s letter. Another 
one was with it. It was the written offer of the Chesun- 
cook Falls Manufacturing Company, to him, to take their 
sub-agency, with the promise of the chief place in a year, 

and a salary of thousand dollars, wdth perquisites and 

prospects unlimited. The week was not up. Dr. Hooper 
he had seen in Boston, and he had said that the pulpit offered 
to Maurice was still vacant. He could reach the wharf in 
time, or, failing that, take the night train. He laid the two 
letters side by side before him, on the grass, and watched 
the approaching column of smoke. Let not the reader un- 
acquainted with such mental trials despise this conflict. 
Reason and study had convinced him ; but reason and study 
are pow'erless, when the mystery of the soul’s perplexity, as 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


265 


to absolute right and wrong, in personal decision, comes 
upon us. He felt the one thing for him to do was to sit 
still : it was literally “ his strength to sit still.” Desperately 
he sat there upon the hill-top, watching the approaching 
boat, from which he could not take his eyes, till he could 
see her swiftly bearing down past the quarries of Sandiland, 
and gliding behind the island-screen of drooping willow- 
boughs, upon the hither side of the river-channel. He 
watched her till she reached the wharf : even then it was 
not too late. She might stop a half-hour for freighting, and 
he get aboard. Ten minutes more would take him to the 
pier, and then a letter would reclaim his valise, and dis- 
charge his bill. He all but clung to the short grass to keep 
his place. After all — the thought came to him — staying 
where he was, decided nothing. He w^onld not be com- 
pelled to enter the school because the boat left him. 

He turned sharply round, as if the thought stung him. 
He looked no more toward Broadwater, but gazed fixedly 
at the Hoveden Hills, as if he would imprint their outline 
upon his memory, until he heard the faint toll of the steam- 
boat-bell. Then he stood up, and saw her drive with 
gathering speed past the lower buildings of the town, and 
swing out into the broad reach toward the gorge beyond. 
Then he walked, with deliberate but firm steps, down the 
hill toward the Divinity School. The tone of his mind 
came back as he reached its northern entrance. He had 
now a practical embarrassment, to find those of whom he 
was in search, and he was himself again. The life he had 
been leading seemed to come to his aid, and he bethought 
himself of the necessary steps to make his errand known. 
He went straight up the stairs, meeting no one, to the little 
ante-room before the chapel, thinking to wait until some 
one appeared. To his surprise, he found it changed. The 
altar was no longer there, but only a chair and table in its 
place. The lectern had disappeared, and only a few little 
tables were standing in front of the seats. The door of one 
of the adjoining rooms opened, and a young man came out. 
Maurice, without speaking, put into his hand his card and 
the letter which Gardiner had given him. The young man 

glanced at the address, and then said, “ The Bishop of 

is now in the study ; walk in here, sir, and he will see you.” 
Maurice entered a small chamber, partially screened oft* to 
23 


266 BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 

form a sleeping-room, and passed through into a large and 
nobly proportioned apartment. Upon the dark-crimson 
papered walls were hung various prints and engravings. 
One side was entirely lined with well-filled book-shelves. A 
large study-table was in the centre; a small table, heaped 
with papers and the confused litter of a busy man’s work- 
ing-room, occupied a corner. Various broad and comfort- 
able chairs stood invitingly about. The large French-fold- 
ing sashes of the east window were open, and a pleasant 
breeze came fluttering in. A gentleman rose from his seat, 
by the little table, to greet him. He was of middle height, 
with black, curling hair, just touched here and there with 
gray. He was stouter and shorter than Gardiner, erect, 
and with a dash and mobility of movement, and a quick 
play of features, which were clear cut, and conveyed an 
assurance more of energy than of reserved power. His 
smile was singularly pleasant ; and, as he took the letter 
and card, he motioned Maurice to a seat. He read the 
letter almost at a glance, threw it on the table, and, start- 
ing up, held out both hands to Maurice, clasping his with 
a warm pressure. 

“ I am delighted to see you,” he said, “ and your mind is 
made up, is it? I judge so by your coming to us. Thank 
God, thank God, for it. Gardiner writes to me every thing 
good about you. I had a letter from him last night, anx- 
iously inquiring about you, and saying that your place 
should be ready in the school as soon as you came. And 
you desire, of course. Holy Baptism first? Mr. Vincent — 
the Rev. Mr. Vincent, Mr. Maurice — will you be good 
enough to see that the font is ready, and to get out my 
robes, there in my trunk, in my chamber? And now, my 
dear fellow, we must have your confirmation to follow. I 
am acting here while the Bishop is away, and have his full 
authority. You are really determined, are you ? Sit down, 
and tell me all you want to say.” 

Vincent had left the room, and the two were alone. The 
kindly, earnest manner of the Bishop fairly opened Mau- 
rice’s heart, strained, as it was, with the long emotion of 
his mental conflict. He could only murmur a few inco- 
herent words : “Thank you, thank you, Bishop;” and then 
he bowed his face on his hands. The Bishop laid one hand 
gently on his shoulder, and then waited for self-control to 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 267 

come back. Then Maurice lifted up his head. His eyes 
were tearless and his mouth firm. “ I came here/’ he said, 
to ask for Baptism only, to lay aside my old heresies, to 
resign myself into the hands of my only Lord. I have 
tried and failed as a minister. I know not whether I ought 
to ask more than this; even to be confirmed, to become a 
communicant, seems too much.” “No : it is not too much. 
We will not hurry you, but indeed your failure was not 
your fault. I have heard a great deal about you from one 
who knew you well. She— eh— well, that person,” said the 
good Bishop, slightly confused, “assures me that you can 
do the Church noble service. Your work failed, because i< 
was not built on any thing strong or stable. I judge that 
you failed, because you worked too well, — too much like a 
Churchman. Winthrop has the greatest admiration for 
you. If you see your mistake now, — that your belief was 
wrong and your work outside the church instead of in it,— 
why should not you take a new start?” “ I feel so weak, 
so doubtful of myself.” “ That is just as you ought to feel ; 
but do you not think you are called to the work of the 
ministry?” “I thought so once; when I was saved from 
the wreck of the ‘ Mystic,’ I vowed myself to that. Oh, if 
I could have only come here then ! These lost years! these 
lost years I ” “ My dear young friend, not lost ; you have 

had training, you have gained experience, you have learned 
that it is not theories but convictions which succeed ; you 
are better fitted for our ministry, instead of being worse fitted, 
by what you have gone through. Every clergyman makes 
some failures and blunders; I wish I could have made mine 
upon Unitarians. But we won’t speak of what is to come 
yet. You are ready and desirous to be baptized, seeking 
therein remission of sins, and to profess your faith in 
Christ, God as your only Saviour?” “Indeed and indeed 
I am.” “And you would not shrink from owning that 
faith before men, and trying to live according to it?” “I 
would not,” said Maurice, “ God helping me ;” and his eye, 
full of sad earnestness, was lifted to meet the gaze of the 
other. “ And you would not shrink from those means and 
helps which will give you strength to keep your vows. If 
the Lord were on earth, and bade you come to Him, you 
would not turn away?” “I hope not,” said Maurice. 
“Then you will not refuse the invitation, the offer He 


2G8 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


makes of himself invisibly through the Sacrament?” *‘If 
I may, — I do not know, — it is too much to think of now.” 
“ Well, I will not press you ; you must want time for pre- 
paration. Yet, if it were only Maundy Thursday, we 
might unite all the services. It is almost a pity,” said the 
Bishop, whose enthusiastic love for the Church led him 
to make the most of her rites. “ However, perhaps it is 
best as it is. We have evening service at seven to-night in 
the Chapel, instead of the usual hour. I have two or 
three others to confirm, two of the school from my own 
diocese, who were brought up Congregationalists. And 
now sit here, my dear boy, as long as you like ; but please 
excuse me, as I am much engaged till then. Would you 
prefer to be alone ? I am sure the ladies would be glad to 
have you join us at tea ; but, judging from my own feeling, I 
thought you would rather not meet any one till after the 
service.” “ Thank you. Bishop. I should very much 
prefer being alone till then.” The Bishop put a little 
manual of devotional preparation into his hands and left 
him. Maurice sat for some time busily reading it and 
striving to control the current of his thoughts. Doubts, 
questions, the errors of his past days, self-distrust, all man- 
ner of perplexities, came to beset and bewilder him. Yet 
clearer and clearer was the firm resolution to go on. He 
closed the book. He took from his pocket the little Prayer- 
book which had belonged to Frank, and the packet which 
Maud had given him. He remembered he was to read it 
then. He broke the seal ; it contained a brief portion of a 
letter and some verses. The fragment of the letter was in 
Frank’s handwriting, and was as follows : — 

“And now, dear Maud, I have resolved to give myself to 
God. I do not take this step, that I may be more worthv 
of you, though I pray for that continually, but because, as 
you have taught me, it is right. I shall be confirmed next 
Thursday, at Grace Church in the City, not waiting for the 
Bishop to come to Cambridge. May God help me to keep 
my vows ! ” The rest of the letter was torn off. Upon the 
back of this fragment was, in Maud’s hand, this indorse- 
ment : “ All that remains to me of my dear, dear Frank.” 

The verses were in Maud’s writing ; but, as Maurice read 
them, he felt they were not her own. We give them as 
they were : — 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


269 


“ 0 Lord ! Thy Church’s gates are opened wide 
To all who humbly knock; 

There is the fold secure wherein abide 
Thy home-returned flock. 

“ 0 gracious Lord ! admit me as the least 
Of that great company! 

Grant me to sit low at Thy marriage feast, 

Thy new-born child to be. 

“ Without Thy gates sadly I watch and weep. 

By sin made desolate. 

Deep is my sin. Let penitence as deep 
My path to Thee make straight. 

“ 0 Word made flesh ! I own thy healing power; 

Grant me Thy healing wave. 

Oh ! bear with me till the baptismal hour. 

And then be near and save.” 

The <5nly other thing in the parcel was a note addressed 
as folh^ws : “ To my brother in the Lord, Bryan Maurice, 
to be 0 |^ned after his Baptism.” 

He replaced the papers hastily, as the opening of the 
door staitied him. It was not the Bishop, but the young 
clergyman whom he had met at first. “ The Bishop sent 
me to say io you, sir,” he began, “ that perhaps you would 
like to go into the Chapel before the rest, and I will take 
you in.” Maurice understood the thoughtful kindness of 
the act. Ho would gladly have passed some of the time in 
prayer ; but in a strange room, where he dreaded interrup- 
tion, his New England shyness interposed. “Is the Chapel 
far?” he ask^d. “It used to be in the house.” “Far! 
Oh, no I you can see it from here,” and he stepped to a side 
window and pointed. Maurice looked out. Across a little 
grassy quadrangle, one side open to the street, itself form- 
ing the south side, was an exquisite little building, built 
from the red sandstone of the neighboring quarries. It 
had arisen since Maurice’s former visit to Broadwater. Its 
sharp roof was covered with many kinds of colored slates. 
Midway of the nave rose a little pointed bell-cote, in front 
of which projected a porch of open-w'ork, screening the 
entrance. 

“That is the new chapel,” said Vincent; “shall we go to 
it?” He led the way by a different staircase from that by 
which Maurice had entered, descending into the body of the 
23 * 


270 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


house. Maurice caught a glimpse of a broad hall and 
stately suit of rooms, and he heard the sound of ladies’ 
voices. He shrank from meeting any one, and was relieved 
to follow his guide along an outer passage, an enclosed 
piazza, sashed and glazed, which served as a cloister to lead 
to the quadrangle. They crossed this, and reached the 
little porch. Vincent unlocked it, and said, “It is now 
near six. I will lock the door, if you like, and then you 
cannot be disturbed till just before seven, when Martin 
comes to light up and ring the bell.” He held out his 
hand, saying, “I trust to welcome you here soon,” and 
Maurice felt there was kindly sympathy in the pressure. 
“You will find a seat on that side,” he added, pointing to 
some low open forms, and then withdrew. Maurice could not 
but look about him. 

The little building, for it was small, was exquisite in pro- 
portions and adornments. The roof was of illuminated 
panels of gold and ultramarine, relieved with vermilion. 
The rafters were disclosed with color-decorations along 
their chamfered edges. The chancel-roof was sprinkled 
with golden stars. In the centre of its apse was a high 
window, with a very lovely full-length picture of the 
Saviour walking on the sea. Beneath was the altar, richly 
vested in an altar-cloth of dark-hued velvet, with the 
sacred Monogram embroidered on the centre. Midway of 
the nave ran a transverse passage, and the eastern part was 
raised a single step, for a choir, with a triple row of stalls 
on either side like an English College Chapel. West of the 
passage were plain open forms, facing the chancel. The 
windows of the nave were slender lancets, with cusped 
heads; two of them were adorned with armorial bearings, 
over which were the mitre and keys, and the inscriptions 
beneath told that they were memorials of the deceased 
Bishops of the diocese. The lesser chancel-lights were four 
quatre-foils, each bearing the type of an evangelist. In 
front of the chancel stood a lectern of carved wood. A 
white marble font was at the entrance of the choir. The 
rail of the altar was within the arch, its gates opened wide. 
A small organ, the pipes richly decorated in colors, occupied 
the niche opposite the entrance, completing the transeptal 
outline of the building. At the west gable was another 
door, and over it a window, with the arms of the school j a 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


271 


mitre and crossed keys, emblazoned on it. Maurice owned 
the subduing influence of the place. As soon as he could 
compose himself, he knelt down at the font, and remained 
there some time. 

In the hush of prayer, the wild whirl of doubts and per- 
plexities went from him. He rose from his knees, and went 
and sat down at the place pointed out, and quietly watched 
the deepening of the twilight, with which the flaming win- 
dows faded to darker and richer tints. It was to his soul 
absolute repose. At length he heard the key turn in the 
lock, and presently an old man came in and began to light 
the gas. He gave a quick glance at Maurice, but said no 
word. Presently he went out, and the quick toll of the 
chapel-bell was heard. One and another came in ; but 
Maurice bent over his prayer-book, and was rather aware 
of their coming than saw them with his bodily eyes. He 
heard the quiet rustle of garments, and caught the passing 
shadows of black dresses. At last a student took his place 
at the organ and began a voluntary. The students thronged 
in, mostly in their black gowns, then several surpliced 
clergy, and last of all, the Bishop in his robes. The stalls 
were quite full, though not entirely. The Bishop did not 
take the mitred stall, but passed on into the chancel within 
the rail, and presently one of the students came to close the 
gates, but, at a sign from the Bishop, returned to his place. 
Maurice expected the usual Cranmer School service, but 
found instead that the full Even song of the Church was 
used. The psalter, however, was chanted antiphonally and 
very heartily. A student read the lessons; the rest of the 
service was taken by Vincent. Maurice could not help 
wondering if he were an officer of the school, as he looked 
at his handsome face, and noted the slender moustache which 
shaded his lip. In the midst of his tension of feeling, 
Bryan had that double consciousness not unusual to pro- 
longed excitement. It is said, men on trial for their lives 
note the veriest trifles with absorbing interest. It was not 
till the second lesson was drawing to a close, that he re- 
membered that he must come forward. All the blood in 
his body seemed to well up into his face. One whisper at 
his heart bade him rise up and flee before it was too late. 
Another, like a far off* voice, bade him go on. The lesson 
ended, and the organist sat quietly turned away from his 


272 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


instiunient, while wondering looks were exchanged by the 
students. The Bishop came forward, with a quick and 
resolute step, toward the font, and, fixing his eyes on Mau- 
rice, said, “Let the candidate for baptism present himself” 
Maurice hardly knew what he must do. Fortunately he 
did the most natural thing, which was, to come to the front 
of the choir. He had but once seen an adult baptism, 
and his ignorance of its details flashed upon him suddenly. 
Vincent came from the choir-stalls and stood at his right 
hand. Some one else, he felt, was standing behind him, 
but who he knew not. He was following, with the utmost 
intent, each word of the exhortation. A perfect calm had 
come upon him. He could almost have started at the 
sound of his own voice, when he replied to the questions, it 
rang so firm and true. At the second one — “Dost thou 
believe all the articles of the Christian faith as contained 
in the Apostles’ Creed?” — he paused for a moment as he 
mentally repeated them, and then bowing his head, replied 
in an accent, the repressed fervor of which thrilled the lis- 
teners, “I do.” Most impressive were the Bishop’s brief 
prayers, as his hand was held above the head of the candi- 
date. But what voice was it, which, as he knelt, answered 
to the Bishop’s demand, “Name this person?” It 'was a 
familiar tone, which aided to swell higher the wave of feel- 
ing which swept over him. To his closed eyes, as the water- 
drops fell on his brow, and the sign of the cross was traced, 
there came a brief vision of the face and form of Frank, 
in pure and shining robes. As the service ended, he turned 
to resume his seat; and the students, rising, began the 
Benedic anima mea. 

He then saw who had been his witnesses. The tall form 
of Mrs. Gardiner showed that she had been one; but who 
was the other? That dark, sunbrowned face, hidden by the 
long, drooping moustache and pointed beard, was known to 
him, and yej; strange. He could not believe himself; but, 
as for a moment their eyes met, a light of joy and thank- 
fulness came into those of the stranger, which brought back 
old days and old memories, and Maurice recognized in his 
other witness — Saltonstall Wise. 

The prayers were over, and the Bishop gave out two 
verses of a psalm, bidding the candidates for confirmation 
to come forward. Two of the young men in the first row 


liKYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


273 


of stalls arose and obeyed. Maurice followed them, and 
AVise was still at his side. Maurice was past all wonder, 
with only one feeling — that of a great and rejoicing hope. 
He had felt that morning utterly cut off from all friends 
and former ties, and here, he could hardly tell how, they 
were all around him. 

Perhaps, with the exception of adult baptism, there is no 
rite of the Church so impressive to a looker-on as confirma- 
tion. Brief as was the interval between the sacrament and 
his recognition of it, Bryan felt the reality all the more of 
his witness to his vows. He rejoiced in the laying-on of 
apostolic hands as the setting of a confirming seal upon his 
purpose. Each moment was taking him irrevocably from 
his old self, away from the weary past. 

He rose up from that rail strengthened, renewed, and 
manful of resolve. And then, sitting in his chair, in quiet 
tones, which were, nevertheless, almost painfully audible in 
the hushed stillness of the chapel, the Bishop addressed 
them. Perhaps it is as well to give his words in their com- 
pleteness, that non-episcopalian readers may get an idea of 
what a Bishop says on such occasions. 

“ My dear young brethren, it is with no ordinary feeling 
that I bid you God-speed. It may never again fall to my 
lot to confirm such a class as this, composed entirely of tho^-o 
who are looking forward to that other laying-on of hands 
which shall advance them to the ministration of Christian 
teaching to others. Yet, if that hope shall lift you, as it 
surely must, above many of the ordinary temptations that 
beset" the Christian life, it brings you, perhaps, into more 
dangerous nearness to others. In the low-lying desert, the 
Tempter solicited the animal appetite. He took our Lord 
to the exceeding high mountain, where he would assail the 
ambition of the intellect. He placed Him upon the giddy 
pinnacle of the temple, where he appealed to the spiritual 
pride. Bemember ever, as you daily pray here, to lay seri- 
ously to heart the honor and danger of the trust to which 
you are to be called. 

“And now, that you may do this, let me give 5'ou these 
few words of caution : Remember that the Church is no 
place for individual display. It is Christ’s kingdom, wherein 
all are subjects— His vineyard, wherein all are laborers — 
His army, wherein all move as the Captain of our salvation 


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wills. What to-night you have renounced was the will and 
the intent to please yourselves. You are here to learn how 
more effectually to serve, to arm yourselves, not for the 
combat which shall win renown and spoil, but for the stern, 
hard battle, the wearying strife, wherein, as one falls un- 
heeded, the next must step before — where, so long as the 
lines advance, the individual deaths are lost in the coming 
victory. You, at least, whatever the case of the lay-Chris- 
tian, are to bear in daily remembrance that your reward is 
not here. 

“ And now, my dear young friends^ to whom I feel bound 
by a closer tie than the ordinary interest which a Bishop 
must ever feel, let me welcome you to your "work and your 
newness of life. 

“ From the bondage of the opposing yet confederated 
errors which assail the life of the Catholic Church, you have 
come forth. AVith sincere conviction, I believe and trust, 
with steadfast purposes, with noble resolves, you stand upon 
the threshold of active Christian manhood. May the same 
Holy Spirit whom we have invoked over you guide you, 
comfort you, defend you, and, at the last, be your approving 
witness in the great day, when all service shall be accounted 
unto Him, by whom we are delivered, and for whom we 
labor 

The chapel was empty. Our two young friends stood face 
to face in the moonlight, outside the porch. “ Bryan, dear 
old boy !” “ Saltonstall, God bless you !” was all they had 

power to say. In a moment, Vincent came back to look for 
them. “Come up to the study, please, gentlemen, the 
Bishop wants to see you.” 

As they passed through the hall of the school, Mrs. 
Gardiner met them. “ I hope you did not think it strange 
my standing as your witness,” she said. “ I got a note by 
the evening mail just before I went to chapel, written from 
Norowam, from Mis^ De Forrest, my niece. She said she 
expected you would be at Broadwater daily, and begged 
me to act as her proxy. She did not like to give up her 
right as your nearest friend in the Church, as your sister ; 
and yet she could not very well, among strangers here, 
appear herself. You remember that we met in Rome, Air. 
Alaurice, and I am delighted to think you will be one of 
us.” 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


275 


The Bishop greeted them warmly. “ Of course,” he said, 
“ Mr. Maurice, iny work is ended. You must wait till the 
Bishop of the diocese returns, before you can complete your 
arrangements for the school ; but that will be only for two 
days, but do not think of giving up the ministry. Here is 
your friend, who owns that he once deserted you at Cam- 
bridge ; you must practice Christian forbearance and forgive- 
ness, and stand by him here. It will be but six months 
before you can both be ordained deacons. I see you want 
to be together ; to-morrow morning come in and have a long 
talk with me.” 

So Wise and Maurice walked out, and up the moonlit 
street. “ Tell me all about it, Wise, and how, of all men, 
you turned up heref’ “ Maurice, you remember my last 
letter ; you must have got it about two months ago. Well, 
it was written, but not dated, some eight months before 
that. I mailed it to you from this country, not knowing 
your whereabouts, doctrinally I mean, but hoping it would 
draw your fire and then I could get at you. Between the 
writing and the sending, I was led to take orders in the 
Church of Rome — sub-deacon’s orders. I had a fit of fresh 
skepticism, more violent than ever, assail me, and I ‘ went 
it blind,’ as they say, in utter desperation. I was never 
confirmed in the Romish Church, for some reason or other, 
and my orders were conferred by the abbot of the confra- 
ternity — if they are orders, which the Bishop here seems to 
doubt. Well, this step, which you would have thought 
final, was the saving of me. I did not herd with the Eng- 
lish priests, of whom there are a lot about Rome ; their over 
faith and enormous credulity sickened me. I went in with 
the Italian priests. They found I was an American, and 
somehow made me out for a liberal. They let me into a 
state of things which astounded me, but did me good. Mau- 
rice, there is a large body of them, larger than any one 
dreams of here, who are ripe for a reformation. They can 
think and talk of nothing else when they meet one they can 
trust. In and through them, I got my first idea of a truly 
Catholic Church, of an inherent vitality which would sur- 
vive chance and change. I learned another thing, also, 
and that is that the Church of England and our Church — 
our Church, Maurice, think of that — are really working for 
unity of Christendom. I found myself in the society, the 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


vera catJiolica, which numbers thousands of members. They 
put into my hands its pamphlets; one of them was written 

by Bishop , the one who has just confirmed us. Then 

I went in their interests to Paris, and saw the Abbe Guet- 
tee and the Russian arch-priest, Wassileff. They completed 
the w’ork, and told me what to do. I returned home and 

learned that Bishop was here. I have been with 

him for six weeks past, though I had not talked with him 
two days before I found what I wanted. He sent for me 
this evening, asking me to stand sponsor for a young Uni- 
tarian minister, who was to be baptized. You can’t think 
what I felt when I saw you ; however, it was all right. I 
am here to live and to die, for the first time in my life, with 
clear convictions and a definite field of duty. I never had 
or professed to have such before. It has been all experi- 
ment. Now stand by me, won’t you?” 

Maurice w^as silent. “ If I have the gift,” he said at last, 
“ the power, and the privilege, to serve at my Church’s 
altars, I shall take it. It seems to me awful presumption, 
after what I have known, and my failures and all ; but those 
who are wiser than I think differently. I leave it in their 
hands.” 

Then followed, of course, the long outpouring of confi- 
dences and details of each other’s life since they parted. 

We need not go over that again. When Maurice was 
alone once more, he broke open with hasty hands Maud’s 
letter. “ Dear Bryan,” it began, “ when you read this, you 
will be, by God’s grace, my brother. Frank, our dear 
Frank, was my betrothed lover, my first, my only love; we 
were both too young to look for an immediate marriage, 
when we were engaged. When Frank sailed for Europe, 
after his father’s death, there had been, as I told you, a 
political quarrel between my father and his ; but we were 
just as sure friends as ever, though we did not meet. He 
suddenly sent me back my letters and presents, and broke 
the engagement. I did not know why, only, in a brief note, 
he- said it was in no respect my fault. Now I know. The 
doctor had told him he could not hope for many years of 
life ; he might prolong them by going abroad and living 
there. He hoped, in the singleness of his heart, that he 
might make me give him up entirely, by his seeming harsh- 
ness. His sister told me all. I had heard it only the week 


BRYAX MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


277 


before I met you in the graveyard at Norowarn, and I could 
not tell you then. He told her to tell me after he was gone, 
and to bid me be happy in a new engagement if I could. I 
have forgiven him the wrong he did my constancy, forgave 
him in the hour of our only, our last, communion. My 
uncle and my great-aunt knew nothing of it then. I have, 
1 trust, no unworthy repinings, but my heart lies buried 
beneath the cypresses of Rome. My life is the Church’s. 
And now that I have told you this, you will not misunderstand 
me when I say, that you were as a holy bequest, to me from 
him, that I have prayed for you, watched over you, and 
have done what I could to bring you into the communion, 
and, if God will, into the ministry of the Church of Christ. 
When we meet again, it will be, I trust, to welcome you in 
that holy calling, to reverence you as my priest, to be 
taught by you as my pastor. Frank left me his whole 
fortune. I keep it in trust to build and endow a church to 
the free service of Almighty God. When you are fitted to 
take charge of that, come to me, and it shall be yours. I 
shall enter into a sisterhood for the care of the sick, 
and teaching of the young, the womanly service of our 
Lord’s appointment. The memory of the blessed dead shall 
be ours for evermore. Yet you, I trust, will marry when 
the right time comes ; I shall never.” 

It seemed Bryan’s fate to be moved about the world by 
unexpected coming of letters. That happens, however, to 
most of us. The Chesuncook Company sent him instruc- 
tions to go on to Philadelphia. He was still their agendas 
far as such work was concerned ; so he resigned himself to 
his fate, and gave up his hope of making his first commu- 
nion at the chapel the next Sunday. He was directed to 
pick up his legal adviser in New York, on his way through ; 
which he did, and, in such good company, made his first 
visit to the Quaker City. They found the business detain 
them over the hours of departure of any thing earlier than 
a night-train. It was barely possible something might come 
up for their attention on Monday morning. So they de- 
cided to remain the Sunday. Maurice’s companion, as a 
Boston lawyer, declared his intention of going to hear the 
distinguished Unitarian preacher. Bryan walked with him 
as far as the plain little building whose exterior is so dispro- 
portionate to the intellectual brilliancy within ; and then 
24 


278 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


turned westward in search of a church where, he had been 
assured at the hotel, all the strangers liked to go. He was 
told to keep on till he reached one of the western squares, 
and at its corner he would find the place he sought. 

Before he reached the place, he came to a church which 
arrested his attention, and which he was unwilling to pass 
by. It stood in its own green yard, with its noble tower 
abutting on the street, and serving as the porch of entrance. 
The tower terminated in a broached spire of wonderfully 
correct proportions, relieved by lucarne windows, not, as 
ordinarily, looking like excrescences stuck upon the surface, 
but just breaking the monotony of its outline. A deep 
chancel, with three windows at its side, was partly decked 
with clinging ivy wreaths. Each gable was surmounted 
by a cross. Maurice lingered, for it was yet early, gazing 
at the architecture, every detail of which showed a feeling 
most unusual in our land of routine copyists. He passed 
by, and found that the west end was not inferior ; but that, 
in the same enclosure, stood a little group of irregular 
buildings in the same style, — evidently the schools of the 
church. A sound of children’s voices singing a hymn was 
heard through the open windows. He turned back, and 
looked in at the deep portal. A gentleman was just enter- 
ing. “Is this an Episcopal Church?” asked Maurice. 
“ Yes, sir. Would you like a seat? Come with me: I shall 
be most happy to give you one.” “I had thought,” said 

Maurice, “ of going to Church ; but this attracts me so 

much, I do not feel as if I could pass by it. Thank you: 
I should be most happy.” Maurice followed his guide 
through the deep portal. A curtain was partially drawn 
aside. The font, richly carved, stood beside a stone pillar 
on the left of the entrance. It seemed to bid him specially 
welcome, and to remind him that his was now the believer’s 
privilege. A broad transept division led to a north door- 
way, through which the children of the Sunday School were 
coming in. The pavement was of figured tiles, upon which 
the tread fell without noise. The church was divided into 
nave and aisles by seven arches on either side, and the lofty 
clere-story was surmounted by an open roof. The sittings 
were of oak, low and massive. Maurice' noted that ' the 
walls were of stone within as well as without, that paint and 
plaster were nowhere used, and that the columns were 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


‘279 


monoliths, eacli with a carved capital. The whole effect 
was impressive and delightful to a degree he was quite un- 
prepared for. Beyond extended the deep chancel, unbroken 
by desk or pulpit, with the altar seen afar, upon the rich 
covering of which stood a pair of chalices, with delicate 
squares of lawn veiling them ; while upon a credence-table, 
formed by a shelf niched in the wall, were the oblata, 
covered with their snowy napkin. The pulpit w^as set 
against the wall of the chancel arch, while opposite it ap- 
peared the lectern : upon it was the open volume of the 
Holy Book. 

Bryan followed his conductor to a seat not far from the 
chancel. When he rose from his own private prayers, he 
was surprised to find his companion still kneeling, — not 
merely bent forward, but upon his knees; and, as the church 
filled, he could not help seeing that this was the habit of 
the place. Almost all who came in, whether young men or 
old, women or children, showed the same devotion. It was 
very different from the fashionable carelessness he had been 
used to witness, and he felt that he had made a happv 
choice. He looked up at the large east window, the central 
figure in which was the Saviour, with four apostles and 
saints beside; and, though to a critical study these would 
have hardly borne close inspection, in his present mood 
they impressed him. Presently, the organ, which was placed 
at the north side of the chancel, behind a fretted screen of 
carved oak, began a voluntary, and two surpliced and 
stoled clergymen issued from the vestry, and knelt at the 
stalls on either side. The one farthest from him, next the 
lectern, read the opening sentences in a clear, rich voice, 
and then, turning to the people, began the exhortation. 
Maurice was struck with the purity his face expressed, the 
refined and tender intellectual cast of his delicate features. 
His accent was the slightly peculiar one of Philadelphia, — 
a pleasant change from the nasality of the New England 
head-voice. The Confession followed, — all around him 
rising up the subdued murmur of voices from the entire 
congregation: at the close of which, there came, in unison 
with a single organ-note, a chanted “Amen.” Then fol- 
lowed the Absolution, with the same response. The unseen 
choir in front replied in the same manner to the versicles 
and Gloria; and, after the Venite, the Psalter of the day 


280 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


was chanted, antiphonally, to a series of beautiful Anglican 
chants. It was to Maurice very moving to stand there with 
his thought following the rapt utterances of the Psalms, 
and looking into the vista, on either side of which, like 
guardian angels, were the white-robed clergy. Beneath the 
great east window, he saw the floriated cross upon the altar’s 
frontal, and, above, the golden gleam of the chalices. He 
could, with a new emotion, lift up his voice in the simple 
but stirring Gregorian to which the Te Deiim was sung, and 
his heart was very “joyful in the Lord” in the thrilling 
burst of the Jubilate. Then followed the Nicene Creed. It 
was to him a personal confession of his faith in the “ one 
Lord Jesus Christ,” as, like a wind-swept harvest-field, all 
heads bowed at the beloved name. Tears rose to his eyes 
as he repeated, “ I acknowledge one baptism for the remis- 
sion of sins.” He could join now in the prayers of the 
Litany, as never before, with a love both purified and 
humbled. At the close of the Litany, the other clergyman 
announced the Introit for the day. Maurice caught sight 
of his face, and, with a start of joy, recognized Professor 
Wentworth. It was very comforting to him that it w'ould 
not be a stranger who should give him his first communion. 
The responses to the Commandments were chanted to a 
peculiarly beautiful movement ; and this (to Maurice) new 
feature in the worship was at first strange, and then very 
pleasing. At the close of the ante-Commiinion service, the 
Rector gave out the hymn, but did not go into the vestry : 
he merely knelt at the rail during the last verse, and then 
went straight into the pulpit. Without announcement of 
text or subject, he began a brief address. It was a concise 
statement of the threefold meaning of the office he was 
about to celebrate : “A sacrifice, not in letter, but in spirit; 
for ‘ye do show forth the Lord’s death till he come.’ It 
was offered in commemoration by the Christian priest, upon 
the Christian altar; yet, as all were kings and priests unto 
the Lord, while the ministerial work was that of official 
commemoration, the worshipping people Avere to offer and 
present their souls and bodies, a reasonable, holy, and living 
sacrifice. It Avas a Eucharist also, — the great thank-offer- 
ing for accomplished redemption. It Avas the sign of rejoic- 
ing, Avhich, though dimmed by the sense of sin, Avas yet 
animated by the Christian hope, Avas the symbol of the re- 


BIIYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


281 


posing faith of Paradise, and the full fruition of heaven. It 
was also, and last, the Communion by faith with the invisi- 
ble presence of Christ, was the reception of the sanctifying 
life of the Holy Ghost, and the type of access to the for- 
giving Father, wrought thrf)ugh the union of the Divine 
Son, both with that Father above, and with the repentant 
and returning child below. As the seal and pledge of these 
mysteries, it was to each and all, with each and all, the 
common partaking.” And then his voice swelled and deep- 
ened ill an earnest appeal to those present not to turn 
away. After all earthly ties were sundered, he bade them 
remember this remained: for the faithful dead who slept 
in the Lord Jesus, for the sorrowing believers who lingered 
here, there was this great and exceeding comfort. By their 
sense of sins forgiven, by their thankfulness for blessings 
manifold, by their renewed aspirations after holiness, he 
besought them not to turn away. The deep hush which 
followed the eloquent tones of that voice, which all who 
listen to love, was broken only by the rising of the congre- 
gation at the Ascription, and the chanting of the Gloria 
Patri which followed. The Rector re-entered the chancel, 
and took from the credence the golden alms-basins. The 
gentleman at his side gave a quick glance around, and then 
rose and went forward. Maurice was struck with the rev- 
erent manner of the wardens and vestrymen, so unlike the 
careless lounge or pompous strut which so frequently dis- 
figures the lay assistance in this part of the service. Only 
one thing jarred at all upon Maurice’s mood; the gold-piece 
he laid upon the plate lay amid a number of the smallest 
silver coin known to our currency. He blushed as if he 
had made a blunder: but the answering color came into 
the face of the tall and noble-looking vestryman who bore 
the plate; and Maurice, if he had known, might have 
found that his offering had called forth a twenty-dollar note 
from the pocket of the other. No one stirred from the slip 
in which Maurice was, as the non-communicants passed 
quietly out. There was no noisy blare of the organ, as too 
often at such times, but a quiet gliding away, as dissolving 
snows melt into quiet droplets. Maurice did not rise from 
his knees till the Rector’s voice began the address, and then 
the congregation in front of him seemed in no degree less 
dense. It was a strange feeling to Maurice when he found 


282 


URYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


himself no longer a spectator, but a participant in the 
service. He strove with all his might to abstract himself 
in the rite. He succeeded in part; but it was not till the 
silence which came when the kneeling celebrant partook 
of the consecrated gifts that lie was able to lift his thoughts 
entirely to what was before him. The haunting, distressful 
feeling of unfitness which so often besets the first commu- 
nion, before the spirit is disciplined and trained, was upon 
him. One sentence that he had heard that morning came 
to his aid — “worthy because of unworthiness, fit because 
conscious of unfitness;” yet, though calmed by prayer, his 
heart beat very quickly as he followed his companion at 
last up to the chancel. A lady dressed in quiet half-mourn- 
ing stood immediately before him, so that they knelt side 
by side at the first place left vacant. As the priest stood 
before them, Maurice saw him break a portion of the bread 
in twain as he administered it. The communion was very 
full, and the elements were obliged to be carefully given. 
It shared between him and his neighbor the same frag- 
ment; and presently, when the bearer of the chalices came 
to them, each drank at the same moment. Maurice thought 
nothing of it then, of course; but, presently, it was to come 
to him in a way he little expected. In that excited state 
of the perceptiofis which is apt to co-exist with strong spir- 
itual emotion, we are often compelled to note and remember 
similar circumstances. 

Deep was the feeling, almost overpowering the joy, with 
which Maurice returned to his place. He knelt, praying 
long and fervently, till the congregation rose to join in the 
Gloria in Excelsis. Then his eye fell upon the young lady 
who had knelt beside him. Several, who had occupied in- 
termediate slips, had left the church after receiving (for the 
church had been very full, and more than three hundred 
had been at the rail before Maurice went up.) She was 
standing but a few slips in advance, and something familiar, 
which he could not explain, drew his attention to her. The 
choir had mostly left the church after the Trisagion, leav- 
ing only two or three voices to lead the congregation. The 
Gloria Avas sung to an invariable chant, well-known to all. 
Somewhere, there rang in his ears a familiar voice, and, 
strangely, fantastically, it seemed to him, he was thinking 
of the city of Rome. He thrust back the thought resent- 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


283 


fully, as an alien intrusive feeling. When the benediction 
had been spoken, and Maurice was ready to depart, he 
turned to thank the stranger who had given him a seat. 
This would, no doubt, have led to further conversation; but 
another of the vestry came up to say something, and Mau- 
rice, thinking he would wait outside, went toward the west 
door. The sexton had lifted its curtain, as the congregation 
retired, and the full radiance of noon poured through the 
arch. A female figure was standing in the clear, bright 
space of the door-way. Her dark dress helped to give the 
impression of mere outline — a distinct, dark shadow, and 
nothing more — and so the peculiarities of attitude were the 
more marked. Maurice saw it all in a moment. It was 
precisely thus that he had seen the young Quakeress stand 
upon the night when she had lost her way at Rome. There 
was just the patient, waiting, enduring look. The blood 
rushed to his heart, and a sick and faint feeling came over 
him. It was cruel for such a mocking likeness to come at 
such a time. He stepped hastily forward, and then as in- 
stinctively checked himself. Just then a little girl came 
from the church-yard. “O Miss Ellen!” she said, “I’ve 
been waiting and waiting ever so long to tell you that Jane 
is better, and mother says she will have her baptized to- 
morrow, at evening service.” “Thank you, Lucy, dear. 
Tell your mother I will come and see her,” was the reply. 
Maurice could doubt no longer, and yet the sea, the pitiless 
sea, gives not up its dead. He shook his head sadly. It 
was a cruel trial. She left the church. Maurice was about 
to follow, when he saw that she crossed the yard, and went 
into the school-building. He turned again to the porch, 
meaning to wait on the street outside. Two ladies stood in 
the entrance talking. He overheard one say, “Did you 
see Ellen Winrow, to-day? Her face was almost heavenly. 
I have not seen her look so happy since the night when she 
was confirmed.” Maurice could hesitate no longer: he 
turned back at once, determined to seek her out. She had 
re entered the church, with her Sunday-school class-books 
in her hand, and was passing through it, so that they met 
iust at the font. The broad light of noonday revealed 
them each to the other. She stood perfectly still, her eyes 
growing larger and larger, and then sank down at the base 
of the carved stone of the font. Maurice sprang to her to 


284 


BKYAN MAUKICE OR THE SEEKER. 


raise her up, saying (for his calmness came back to him) 
“Ellen! — Miss Winrow! — do not be alarmed: it is I— 
Bryan Maurice.” The ladies in the porch had seen it all, 
and hastened back. Ellen unclosed her eyes a moment, 
murmuring only, “Thankful! — so thankful! I knew — I 
knew it would come,” and then relapsed into her fainting 
spell. Maurice gently laid her head in the lap of one of 
the ladies, the one who had spoken, who had at once sat 
down on the base of the font beside her; and then, after 
one glance into the basin to see if by chance any water 
could be left there, which of course there was not, darted 
off to the vestry. He startled the good Rector and assist- 
ant very decidedly by his abrupt entrance, as he seized the 
water-pitcher, only pausing to say, “A lady fainted;” which 
caused them to hurry on their coats, in place of their just- 
discarded cassocks, and to follow him down the aisle. The 
gray-haired sexton had partially dropped the curtain, the 
elder of the two ladies had taken off Ellen’s bonnet, and 
the younger was fanning her energetically. Both looked 
sharply at Maurice, as with the feminine instinct of sisterly 
sympathy, they regarded him, in some wicked way the 
cause of so much emotion. But all suspicions were put to 
flight as the young girl opened her eyes once more; and, as 
she saw Maurice, the blood surged back to her cheeks. She 
tried to rise. Maurice knelt down beside her, and put his 
hand in hers. She held it with a long-clinging clasp. 
“You have come back to me from the dead,” she said, “at 
last. I knew at the altar to-day that a great blessing was 
coming to me; but I did not know what it was.” “Hush, 
hush! Ellen: you must not try to talk. Dr. Wentworth, 
we must have a carriage for her, and get her home,” said 
the lady who was holding her. “Oh, no; I am better: let 
me get up.” “Keep still, deary, keep still; and Dr. Went- 
worth or Mr. Arden, if one of you will send a carriage, we 
will wait here with her.” So, as she was really better, 
though very weak, the others went away, leaving Maurice 

with the ladies. Most peremptorily, Mrs. , the elder, 

forbade anything like explanations, saying, “No, no: you 
shall see each other to-morrow, and talk as much as you 
like; but now it would only distress her. It is enough foi 
you, deary, if you know that it is all right: keep entirely 
quiet.” Which counsel, considering that she (an experi- 


BRVAX ]V[AURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


285 


enced mother and happy wife, with a most tender sympathy, 
and eke abundant curiosity) was burning to know more, 
was very praiseworthy. The sexton returned with the 
carriage, and Ellen was able to walk to it, and even to pro- 
test against any one being allowed to go home with her. 
She was obliged to submit, and the younger lady, a fellow 
teacher in the Sunday School, got in with her. Maurice 
would gladly have followed, but the matron interposed. 
“No,” she said, “I shall play duenna to-day to you young 
folks; and meanwhile, as my home is but a little way from 
here, I shall insist upon taking you with me, sir. You are 
not fit to walk to any of the hotels, and there are no cars 
on Sunday.” She saw that Maurice was fearfully overdone 
by excitement, was pale and trembling now, and she, with 
that rare instinct of good sense that she possesses, had com- 
prehended that it was a case wherein ordinary etiquette 
should be postponed. Maurice was too much agitated to 
do anything but passively yield. She would not let him 
speak a word, even to apologize, but took him straight to 
her house, and got him comfortably seated in her cool par- 
lor, and made him swallow a glass of wine before she let 
him utter a syllable. Then, placing herself quietly on the 
sofa, and untying her bonnet, she began: “I suppose I 
guess a good deal, and I think I ought to know more, for 
Ellen W inrow is almost like one of my own girls ever since 
she lost her father and mother. I have taken it for granted 
that she would approve what I am doing. It was not mere 
surprise that made her faint. Were you the gentleman she 
met in Rome, and who was with her on the ‘Mystic,^ on her 
last voyage?” Maurice bowed: he could not trust himself 
to speak. “You see, sir, I know a part: Ellen told me 
some things when she was preparing for confirmation; not 
much, but something which came out in explanation, and 
I feel as if I ought to know more.” “There was no formal 
engagement between us,” Maurice said, “but I had reason 
to hope, that, if we reached home in safety, there would be: 
and now, if Ellen — if Miss Winrow — is free, and not 
changed in heart — ” “That you must find out for your- 
self: I am not to give, but to get confidence, sir. I see that 
you are a communicant of the church; but I think I may, 
without impertinence, waive ceremony so far as to ask you 
what else you are?” “I have been a Unitarian minister 


286 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


I am now, or next week to be, a candidate for orders in the 
Cranmer School at Broadwater. My father was the late 
Judge Maurice of Massachusetts.” “Whom I knew in 
Washington, when he was in Congress from your State. I 
thought I saw a look of some one I knew very well. That 
is quite enough for me. So I ask no more questions, except 
why on earth you never met Ellen since?” 

The reader shall not be required to be present at the 
unfolding of that mystery, which came' out by means of a 
longer conversation than we need to give. Miss Winrow 
was saved by a fishing-boat, and taken into St. John’s, New- 
foundland, and from there got passage to England, to join 
her brother, who had remained in London to enter a busi- 
ness house. Her name did not appear at the time upon the 
lists of the saved ; and Maurice, arriving before the rest of 
the rescued, was, for a like reason, not included. Each 
supposed the other lost. The quiet life which Maurice had 
led, and his disinclination to speak of his shipwreck, had 
prevented his hearing of Ellen’s return. Any one who 
knows the nine-days’-wonder rapidity with which events pass 
out of the American mind will not find this strange. The 
good lady, being satisfied that she was doing right, would 
not hear of Maurice’s returning to his hotel. “ You are in 
six months to be a clergyman — and that is next to being 
one — and no clergyman goes out of this house without 
sharing its hospitality.” So she kept him to dinner ; and 
then insisted that he should go to afternoon service, and 
return to tea, to meet Df. Wentworth, whom she found that 
he knew. She added, playfully, that he should not stir out 
of her sight till it was too late for him to go and try to see 
Miss Winrow. So, as he did not, and could not, discover 
where, in the tolerably good-sized city. Miss Winrow was to 
be found, he rested content, perforce, in a promise that on 
the morrow the information should be given. He did not 

know that Mrs. had snatched a moment’s opportunity 

to write a loving little note to Ellen, telling her that she 
could not see Mr. Maurice till the next day, and that she 
must not do anything but rest. Very quietly the gentle- 
spirited girl resigned herself to it, and lay on her sofa at her 
home, now at her aunt’s house, where she had lived since 
her return. She knew all : she had the feeling of utter 
trust. God had given back to her the one of whom she 
had not ceased to think in the reserve of her virgin heart 


BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER. 


287 


The next morning there came, however, a natural revul- 
sion of doubt. Her heart was beating very fast when tlie 
door-bell rang, and she was sent for to the parlor. ^Irs. 

, her friend, was there alone. “ I have just ten minutes 

to spare, Ellen, with you: not one more. I peremptorily 
ordered Mr. Maurice to walk four squares up Chestnut be- 
fore he returned into 1-th. When he comes back, he is to 
pass through here, and, where he sees me at the window, he 
may ring the bell. I would not tell him the number, or let 
him see me come in. I would not have you taken by sur- 
prise; and, if you do not want to see him, you shall say so. 
AVhen he comes, I shall go up to your aunt’s room, and sit 
with her as long as I think proper for him to stay, and then 
come down and order him off. I will tell aunty all I know 
about him, which is all good. You were made for a minis- 
ter’s wife, Nelly; and now you have your chance, darling.” 
Ellen blushed crimson, as a tumult of happy thoughts 
rushed upon her. She was puzzling herself much, however, 
over this last remark, which she inwardly resolved should 
not be long of explanation; but, in all the timidity of 
maidenly reserve, she busied herself with a vase of flowers 
upon the table, arranging them with hands that trembled in 
spite of her efforts to be composed. The good lady walked 
to the window and pulled up the blind, regardless of the 
fact that it was high noon, and utterly unconventional for 
her to be sitting there in bonnet and shawl. She kept up a 
steady stream of talk, waiting for no answers ; till, suddenly, 
with a brief nod towards the street, she sprang up, saying, 
“Now for aunty!” took Ellen to her heart, and kissed her; 
and then swept out of the room, past the servant who was 
just answering the bell of the hall-door. 

One moment, and Maurice was beside his long-lost, new- 
found love. He knew not what he said, or she what she 
answered, if she did answer; but her head lay upon his 
bosom, his strong arm was holding her in that clasp which 
seals, before witnessing angels, the pledge for a life-long faith. 

Nobody will care for the plain prose of the journey home 
to Broadwater, which Maurice had to take the next day. 
Ellen would not hear of his lingering for her sake. She 
was heroic for him. It was necessary that he should begin 
at once his course of study, in order to be ready for the 
Lenten-Embertide ordination. He could get away at Christ- 


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BRYAN MAURICE OR THE SEEKER, 


mas, but not before ; aiid, after Easter, if he said so, her 
home should be wherever was his. Meanwhile, letters were 
to be his comfort and her daily joy. So they parted, after 
brief meeting. But her Sunday-school children, and the 
poor, among whom she had been a very sister of charity, 
never worshipped her so much, never found her so lovely as 
during that winter of untiring service ; and stormy indeed 
was the winter day that missed her steps from the deep- 
arched portal of her church, and her presence at its daily 
prayers. People asked inquisitively why Ellen Winrow 
had left off her mourning, but got no satisfactory answer 
from the very few friends who were in the secret. 

There stands a lovely church in one of our flourishing 
towns, which, with its schools and rectory, almost realizes 
the Dreamland fancies of the good Bishop in whose diocese 
it is. There, laboring and preaching, catechizing, praying, 
and ministering the sacraments of the New Birth and the 
Heavenly Life, is Bryan Maurice. Not alone; for Ellen is 
with him. Not friendless; for, beside the warm hearts w'ho 
are gathering to his side, there comes to that parsonage, at 
the holy-tide of Easter, one who is ever a loved guest ; for 
sister Maud then takes a brief resting-spell from her con- 
stant work of mercy. She comes to her one great joy — the 
keeping of the Queen of Festivals in the church whose every 
stone is the memorial to her buried love. No other hand 
than hers is suffered to order the flowers which fill, and 
droop over, the white marble font, upon whose vase is carven, 
in tiny letters which only the loving few who know its his- 
tory can read and understand, “In memory of F. G.” 
There is a beautiful east window, too, upon whose glowing 
panes is the figure of the Lord stilling the tempest ; and, 
upon the slender scroll which threads the fair colors at its 
foot, you may read, in ancient type, the text, “And there 
was no more sea.” If your eyes are good, you may also 
trace the fainter inscription: “A thantoffering for great 
deliverance.” And Saltonstall Wise comes there, in the 
summer heats, from his busy city parish, and WTites cheery 
and quaint letters, filled with his fiery hopes of a united 
Christendom — of his frank indignation of all time-serving 
and pettinesses which delay the Church’s needful work. 
Men say, too, that upon him will yet be laid the solemn 
cares, the dread responsibilities of a Missionary Bishopric. 

THE EXD. 


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